Caterpillars and Career Fair

Hal writes:

I have decided to take a new approach to the posts. Pictures and other visual images are very easy to share, so why explain something I can show you? Anna has had a digital camera from before we were married, but I have not really used it much until this summer when I started taking some photos. So, I'm going to try carrying it around more often and see what randomness comes from it.

Today I have two pictures to share. The first is the caterpillar below. (S)he was looking up at the camera when I pressed the button, but there is a couple of seconds in delay before the photo gets taken. Looks like I may need to take more posed shots than action shots. I'm not sure, but I think this furry little guy winked at me.

In my FTS (First Term Seminar) at Gustavus, Culture and Society in Africa, I read the story about a young man who was taken from his family as a boy and raised by catholic missionaries. When he was in his mid-twenties, he returned to his tribe and eventually went through initiation, something that was typically of boys 10 years younger than him. One of the comments he made about being initiated was that afterwards he was much more in tune with nature and saw small bugs and creatures in a magnified way that he had not previously. When I come across small creatures, I tend to think about his story. Although I have lived in Platteville for over a year, this is the first time that I have seen multiple caterpillars like the one pictured above. This is the dirt trail (that we hope some day to be paved) that goes from SW Hall to the rest of campus.

Below is a photo of the 41st annual Fall Career Fair at UWP. Most of the employers pictured below are looking for different types of engineers (UWP is the engineering school of the UW system) but there were also employers for Law Enforcement and other majors.

I think I would enjoy being a recruiter. But the businesses represented in the picture all deal in the area of science, not my strong suit, so I wasn't able to do much more than walk around and encourage my students who were dressed pretty for the event. The interesting thing is that this is the "small" career fair, with the one in the spring being larger and with more employers (since that is when most of our students are graduating). But this career fair also provided an opportunity for sophomores and juniors to explore potential internships and "co-ops" that are required for a number of majors.