Social Spiders By Derreatha Juarez
Gabriella “Gabby” Najm ’14 opens up about her fear of spiders and the symbiotic relationship she now has with them as she works on her graduate research project.
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CHAMINADE NOW
“I suffered from severe arachnophobia until I was in college. One day when I was in middle school, there was a spider crawling in the corner of the windshield of my mom’s car, and I began crying uncontrollably!” This confession may not sound unusual for many people, but it is for Gabriella “Gabby” Najm, Class of 2014. Since graduating from Chaminade, she has actually developed a close relationship with and deep understanding and appreciation of spiders. As an undergraduate at the University of California, Santa Barbara (UCSB), Gabby studied in the relatively small College of Creative Studies, where she majored in biology. She graduated in three years as the college allowed students to take as many courses as they wanted each semester. Gabby explains that the program was challenging and exciting since she was “able to take a variety of research-based courses as an undergraduate, including classes in ecology and evolutionary biology.” These subjects soon developed into passions for Gabby. In her second year at UCSB, Gabby enrolled in a general animal behavior class taught by Professor Jonathan Pruitt, currently the Canada 150 Research Chair in Biological Dystopias at McMaster University in Ontario, Canada. Highly inspired by Professor Pruitt, Gabby inquired if she could be his teaching assistant, and he agreed. In her third year of college, Gabby aided
