I remember myself sweating in front of my laptop, with the monotonous noise of the ventilator breaking the silence of the room, while I tried to disentangle that indecipherable jumble of data from which I had to take out my master thesis.
It was August; my flatmates had came back home for holydays and I was getting crazy enclosed in that house without human contact but brief and infrequent phone calls and 10 hours a day working on something that I didn’t like at all. The days passed and the deadline became closer and, if that wasn’t enough, there was still the little problem of what to do next…what the fuck? After a degree and a master, one still can see herself working on McDonals or something similar, as that old joke:
“What does an employed biologist say to an unemployed biologist?...(take a breath and...), What do you want on the pizza?”…
Yeah, nice. So, I was in that fucking shitty situation and I was terrified with the idea of coming back to my parents home without anything. That’s why I started to send applications, though my master thesis didn’t let me much spare time, so I could only send three…and the third time’s the charm!
After being rejected by a voluntary position in Sta Lucia with Durrell (a childhood dream of mine) and by a german institute of primatology; I managed to be accepted as research assistant in a project with Barbary Macaques in Morrocco for three months and a half!! and I got to know it just the day before going to Gran Canaria for my first field campaign, but that’s another story, as well as Texel…
Then, with this messy introduction, I wanted to start a blog where I could share my experiences, the ones of a recent graduate in Biology who struggles for making the only thing that makes her happy and, the most difficult thing of all, being paid for it!! (Yeah, we are fed up with those “volunteer positions” where you have to pay as if you were going to a luxury vacations. That is not volunteering, it’s not even slavery, it’s a new proof of how rotten is the system, so much that, after studying 23 year you still have to pay for working…sigh). Well; as current fighter, I know the war I and many others are going through to find a place in this field is not a piece of cake. Everyday it’s a battle and every open door it’s just a breath before getting crazy again looking for next one. Because of this, now that I have a lucky streak, I would like to share my experiences with all those in a similar situation. Obviously this is not such an altruistic task; I also miss writing; thing that I used to do before University soaked up my time; and furthermore; I urgently need to practice English (everlasting enemy of latin-languages speakers!!!) cause, after all the courses that one could imagine, exams, certificates and even a year studying in England (Ah…Erasmus, other story too), it seems that every time I need it, it stinks again and I am again Tarzan having just met Jane. So, please, be patient with my way of writing and don’t hesitate to let your corrections at commentaries sections (Thought be polite, I could be very vindictive…)
Thus, those are the three pillars above which I will try to build an entertaining (and understabdable) blog for all my future colleges (and competitors…if you dare, haha!!) and every bored dude around the web.
So, as I was advancing, next stop: Morrocco and the Barbary Macaques….
