ARLINGTON, Texas — Ever since he was a kid, Jorge Garcia thought he wanted to be a doctor. But now, as an adult, you won’t find him in a hospital or clinic. Instead, Garcia spends his workdays surrounded by scaly, furry and hard-shelled coworkers.
Garcia is a naturalist at River Legacy Park and Nature Center, where he leads nature education programs for groups of all ages and helps care for River Legacy’s wildlife ambassadors, including rats Alfredo and Linguini, Buttons the opossum and a three-toed box turtle named Mr. Six.
Back when Garcia first started as a student at the University of Texas at Arlington, he still planned on becoming a doctor, just like he had his entire childhood. But the summer between his sophomore and junior years, Garcia had an opportunity to apply for an internship at River Legacy through the university’s UTeach program. Garcia had always been fascinated by wildlife and intrigued by the Nature Center, so he applied for the position and was accepted.
During that internship at River Legacy, Garcia started to rethink his career plan.
“That’s kind of what really convinced me to shift focus onto something else away from med school,” Garcia said. “Not that I didn’t like it all of a sudden, really. I’ve always loved the idea of the science behind medicine, but I just thought this is really the place where I want to be.”
Looking back at his childhood interests now, Garcia’s career as a naturalist makes sense. He loved playing with wildlife toys and watching David Attenborough specials and the PBS program Zoboomafoo. There’s one show in particular that sticks out in his mind—an Animal Planet documentary about chameleons. Garcia was mesmerized by it and even now can vividly remember where he was when he watched it.
Now instead of just watching documentaries, he’s the one teaching people about wildlife. Garcia said one of his favorite parts of his job is helping people connect with nature in a way they haven’t before.
“I love whenever I’m teaching and you see in people’s faces that moment where they get fascinated by something, or maybe it’s the first time they’re hearing about a fact,” Garcia said. “Maybe they had grown up thinking one way, and then they hear something different and it changes their perspective.”
Garcia’s face lit up when he spoke about his younger students, too. Right now, he’s working on developing new curriculum about ornithology—the study of birds—for his classes, as well as some more programming about dinosaurs for his preschool-age students. Garcia says he hopes to instill a love and appreciation for nature in all of his students and help open the door for the next generation of naturalists by introducing them to the field.
Maybe a few years in the future, instead of remembering a chameleon documentary, another naturalist will look back on afternoons spent in Garcia’s classes as a kid and vividly remember just how mesmerized they were by the love of nature he passed on to them.
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