Journal #31- job shadowing

Where do I begin to talk about my job shadowing experience.  On Wednesday, I had the pleasure of going to the Henson Robinson Zoo in Springfield to do my job shadowing.  I went to the zoo because I someday aspire to be a marine biologist or a zoologist.  Obviously, there are not going to be many marine biologists in Central Illinois, but that's okay.  I was still really excited to go to the zoo to see all the animals and learn as much as I could from the person I was shadowing!  When I got to the zoo at around 8:15 in the morning, the snooty lady at the front desk told me and my friend, Desi Burns (who was also there shadowing for school), to follow the path down to there barn.  Our two zookeepers were there waiting for us.  We were so excited!!!!  It was a beautiful day; the sun was shining, the birds were singing, the monkeys were making their monkey sounds.....until we got to the barn.  My expectation was a friendly zookeeper who was passionate about her job, and who was also excited to have a high schooler follow her around so she could shed some of her intelligence on an ignorant teenager who may be interested in her field.  No.  We found ourselves wound up with two unfriendly ladies who told us straight up that they did not want us to be there.  It was not as bad as I probably make it sound, but I can tell you that I did not have fun.  I pictured us touring the zoo, talking about animals or interests or something, feeding them, and maybe if I was lucky she would let me hold something.  Again, this was not the case.  When I was not standing in a smelly, concrete building watching her spray animal feces off the wall and listening to her complain about her life, I was standing in another building doing absolutely nothing but watch her chop lettuce, text on her phone, and listen about how she hated every single one of her coworkers.  This lady was a real nutcase.  I learned more about her personal life than I did about the zoo, which by the way, I did not even get to walk around.  My zookeeper was lazy, cussed every other word (not a big deal, but I still felt like it was bad form), and talked bad about anyone who came in the vicinity of the tiny room I spent my day in.  Whenever Desi and her zookeeper would come around, the two ladies would stand and gossip for as long as they pleased while giving us dirty looks as if we were bothering them.  FINE WE GET IT.  You don't want us here, we know!!!  My lady literally told me: "Yeah we really don't like when we get shadowers or kids here to work with us.  They just get in the way and it's weird because we don't want to talk to them so they just watch us."  Oh okay.  I'm sorry I'm not sure if you got the memo, but I'm here for a reason.  I didn't wake up extra early and get my hopes to hear about how you have an illegal skunk living with you in your trailer.  All in all, I had a better time leaving and looking at the penguins on the way out than I did for the 2 hours I was there.