My Bio Mojo

I have been applying for many jobs recently, finding most of them on the Texas A&M Wildlife and Fisheries Sciences job posting site.  Few have been interested and even less have tried to offer me a position. I turned down one working in Bakersfield, California because it was poor timing for me but worst of all it was only tangentially related to the type of work i am looking for. Why did i even apply for it? Im not sure what the initial motivation was but at least it was nice to get a positive response from one of them.  Most of the other positions have either turned me down, or worse simply disregarded my follow up emails and not given me the time of day.

After a while i have got to thinking about this whole job search and where i am going.  It is mostly depressing and only occasionally exciting to think about the future and what it may bring.  I have been in contact with a dear friend, Ashley Pacelli, who both motivates me and is able to understand the difficulty i feel in finding what it is I truly want. She is most often inspiring to me (check the profile of this page to the right) and recently suggested that i might need to reacquaint myself with the reason I love biology. In essence, i need to get my Bio Mojo back.  I am thinking that a good stint of time spent in Ecuador, the biodiversity capitol of the world, might just do the trick. 

I spent five weeks there in 2008 studying the Ecology through a class at the University of Oregon.  It was the most incredible class and experience of my life. One that I would not change for the world.  I got to witness some amazing creatures firsthand that have never been presented to me in any class or nature show I've ever seen.  We stayed at lodges, hotels and stations in various habitats, traveling from the city to the high paramo, to a polylepis (rose) forest, to the cloud forest, to the amazon, to a black water system, and finally spending a short stay on the coast.  I learned a great deal about life in those all-to-short weeks and have been yearning for my return to that magical place ever since.

Hummingbirds at Guango Lodge

A mushroom growing at 11,000 ft.

One beautiful and tiny Orchid

What would a trip to the Amazon be of you didn't see a poison dart frog?

Tarantula's leg in Tiputini

Candy Bugs- Not as friendly as the name might imply.  (Photo by Ashley Pacelli)

I plan to volunteer somewhere for a while and take spanish classes to get a base in the language. Then i want to visit one of the many... MANY ecolodges or research stations around the country and see what work I can do for them (El Monte, Sani Lodge). Its a cheap place to travel and if you volunteer your way around then it becomes practically free besides the price of a plane ticket.  It is fairly safe, extremely beautiful and if you speak a little spanish it can be very easy to get around. Getting out to a research station would be the ultimate goal for me (Los Cedros, YanaYacu, Tiputini). To be out in the wild where I could once again begin to feel the pulse of the earth.  I am sure that that would center me again, that would help to focus my thoughts and ambitions on a unified purpose.