As a marine biology major, Tess Hooker leads a busy life. As a marine biology major who also happens to be a college athlete, time management has become her best friend. But a busy schedule and workload hasn’t stopped this senior from planning out her future and having a personal life, too.
When she’s not studying wildlife or running drills at Naimoli for women’s lacrosse, Tess partakes in a number of activities on campus.
Throughout her four years she’s been involved with the Scuba Club, a member of the Women’s Indoor Soccer Team and has danced in multiple Dance Happenings and Spring Dance Concerts. To add on to her physical lifestyle, she also works for Campus Recreation for Intramurals.
“First semester freshman year I didn’t really do anything because I was a little nervous, you know?” Hooker said. “Everyone’s a little nervous! But by the second semester I realized that I could start being more involved in other things besides just academics, so I joined clubs like Tri Beta, and I just expanded from that.”
On top of all of her extra curriculars, she still has time to work as a teaching assistant in biology and maintain a 3.7 GPA. She hopes to use her degree to go into teaching and work with children to teach them about marine life.
“I didn’t take on everything at once, but it did kind of pile on and you just get better and better at time management. I used to be really bad at time management. Like in high school, I had no idea what I was doing,” Hooker said.
Now, with the lacrosse season fully under way, her last semester is full of excitement. Fox 13 recently visited the school to interview Coach Gallagher about the upcoming season, which will be the program’s first ever campaign.
Although the Tampa Tribune did a story last fall, this recent story has kicked the team into high gear.
“It [the interview] helped, but it’s felt really real since last fall. The Fox 13 thing was more excitement like ‘Oh my god, we have a game in two weeks! This is really happening!’ It’s more like it’s almost about to happen,” she said.
If you would like to catch the women’s lacrosse team’s first game and home opener, it will be Sunday, Feb. 9 at 2 p.m.
Layla Souchet can be reached at layla.souchet@spartans.ut.edu.