President Tkach, ASP members, colleagues, and friends, I am incredibly humbled to be counted among the recipients of the Henry Baldwin Ward Medal. It is truly an honor to be here today. I wish it could be in person, but I am thankful that we can use virtual technology to gather, despite the devastation and uncertainty caused by the current pandemic. In preparation for today, I was looking through the addresses of previous Ward Medal awardees. In so doing, I found a common theme: Parasitology is often what happens when you are making other plans. Thus, in the tradition of these addresses, I will share my plans, what actually happened, and a few of the lessons I learned along the way.
My path to biology began with art. In order to draw an organism and make it identifiable, you have to understand its form and how to represent...