Senior Spotlight May 2021 – Izzi Ariail

Senior Spotlight May 2021 – Izzi Ariail

This year we are continuing our tradition of Senior Spotlights! For everyone, 2020 and 2021 have been challenging years, but we want to highlight our amazing seniors for preserving through these difficult times.

Meet Izzi Ariail! She is from Atlanta, Georgia. Izzi’s love for meteorology is somewhat of a mystery to her, but she says it started from an early age.

“Although there was never a defining moment, I have always been interested in science,” she said. “My favorite part of kindergarten was the weather song we sang every day, and my favorite Calliou episode was the one with the thunderstorm, even though at that age thunder scared me. I was always asking family and teachers “why”. Why does that machine work like that? Why is the sky blue? Why, why, why. Around 5th grade I decided I wanted to pursue meteorology as a career.”

Her love of meteorology drew her to Norman, where she has spent her time getting involved on campus as a campus tour guide, as well as doing tropical research and being a member of SCAN.

Izzi says the toughest part of college was some of the classes.

“Although I wish I could give some profound answer, the honest answer is probably physics,” she said. “I get very frustrated when I can’t understand the reasoning behind a concept, so when I got stuck on homework problems where I couldn’t figure out why my answer was wrong, it led to some tears. I think another difficult part about the meteorology program for me was maintaining my passion for weather when I was in very equation heavy classes. It’s easy to get lost in all of the numbers and letters and forget what they mean and why they are important.”

Izzi says it’s hard to pick her favorite part about her time at OU! She says her time studying abroad in the UK was beneficial, as well as living in a different part of the US.

After graduation, Izzi will be returning to the UK to intern for a company in London that uses AI to assess climate risk for different companies. After that, she’ll come back to Oklahoma to finish her last year of her MBA as part of the 4+1 meteorology/ MBA program. Once she finishes that, she hopes to continue working in the climate risk industry.

Congratulations, Izzi! The School of Meteorology is so proud of you!