Antlab in Panama

Tonight I’m not feeling particularly poetic, so this post may be lacking flare and pizzaz in respects to avoid sentiment or emo-talk.

It’s our last night on the island. Matt is scraping up the last of his data, I’m staring at my $5 bottle of white wine, counting down the minutes until I pop the cork and put my feet up. It felt really good to type in all my data I collected from Litter Piles 2006. I’m anxious to get back to the lab, pull out the scope and sort my whirl packs. I hope I will have significant results.

The trip started with me reading “On Becoming a Biologist” by John Janovy Jr., which Mike bestowed upon me before the the trip. This book is an honest and blunt interpretation of being in academia as a biologist, and delves a little into the mind of a biologist:

” With the recognition of desire as a driving force, we begin to get a clue as to what motivates satisifed biologists: They love what they are doing. More often than they will admit, their love is for the organisms themselves.”

- John Janvoy Jr., page 36

I have learned at least three very significant aspects of field biology from this trip:

1. Experience designing experiments and learning from errors with design.
2. How to cope with monotonous and repetitive lab work, and focusing on the gold pot at the end of the rainbow: DATA
3. Developed a love for an organism, a desire to know, an urge to explore.

Since I am at the beginning of my journey towards graduate school, I keep my senses alert for a topic of study. I knew before I came that fungal parasites interest me, but I didn’t have a clue what I really wanted to spend a large portion of my life masticating. Now, I think I know: FUNGI. I love how it digests externally by spewing out enzymes. I love how you can only see it when it’s reproducing. I love the wide variety of fungi and the unique fruiting bodies that result. I love how it has applicable uses for human health. I love how it hides in leaves as an endophyte, grows tall, hard fruiting bodies on decomposing logs on the rainforest trail, manipulates and uses arthropods, and how it can even be a parasite on another species of fungi.

One thing I anticipate may prove to be a road block is proving I am as qualified to be a successful scientist as my male counterparts. In last Friday’s Nature, a commentary was published criticising three scientific hypotheses that women are handicapped inately by our brain structure; this is why women are trailing men in science. Ben Barres draws from three scientists: Peter Lawrence, Larry Summers, and to my surprise, Steven Pinker. Although, I do believe there are differences between men and women, they are not brain related as much as hormonal. I am just as competitive, intelligent, ambitious, and dedicated as any male can be. (so there!)

If you are contemplating an education in field biology, my advice is to stop thinking and start doing. It’s the only way I was able to conceive what this type of work entails and develop an understanding of the type of life I would be chaining myself to for the duration of my scientific inquiries.

Bon voyage!! I really had a killer time.