College Undergrad at Purdue Looking to get into Paleontology

[mmabry@purdue.edu]

Hello All!

First of all, I would like to say that I am very excited to be part of this 
mailing list! I never guessed I would get so, much excitement from just reading 
all of the things you guys have to say. I love it already!

Anyway, right now I am enrolled at Purdue University. I am a Freshman 
Undergraduate Student in the college of Engineering. Recently, I've been 
thinking about my future and really decided that engineering is not something I 
want to devote my life to. So, upon deeper contemplation, I arrived at 
paleontology. For a LONG (when you read long, think all of my life) I've have 
been completely in love with dinosaurs. Not only dinosaurs, but really 
everything that has to do with the lifeforms that walked, crawled, swam, 
slinked (well you get the idea) across the land millions upon millions of years 
ago. So, I've decided that I would only be happy with paleontology of some sort 
as my profession. and the first step to do that is to switch into the geology 
school here at Purdue.

However, although the Internet is generally a hot-bed of information, I've yet 
to find the aforementioned plethora of info that specifically relates to 
paleontology. Especially for someone who is already in college and has close to 
a semester under his belt. 

So, I thought I would turn to you guys, the ones who would know a good deal 
about paleontology, to see if you could help me out a little bit. I'm looking 
for things like the job outlook, salary (not that it's really that important 
when it comes to fulfilling a lifelong dream, but still has to be considered), 
where most paleontologists work and lastly, whether or not it really matters 
where you study undergrad (or if Purdue happens to be a good place to study 
geology/paleontology). 

Thank you so much for all of your help and time I'm eagerly awaiting responses 
to this topic and others,

Matt Mabry