Bee and Wasp Season

The same old same old is going on here except now we are dealing with a new forest danger. It is bee and wasp season. Lek, one of the rangers, got stung yesterday on his head. He was only stung once, but the entire side of his face and neck swelled incredibly. And, he isn't allergic. They tell me that amount of swelling and pain is a normal response from a sting from this species of wasp. Wonderful. We keep a running tally of all our leech bites (they have to draw blood to count) and bee stings. I'm doing pretty good, only 3 stings and 26 leech bites. 

We now have two graduate students from Stony Brook University who joined the project at the beginning of June. Eileen was a field assistant for the langur project two years ago and now she is doing a pilot study before jumping into full out data collection for her Ph.D. Chris is only staying for three months just to get an idea of what it is like to work in Thailand. Anyway, so I've been pestering them with questions about Stony Brook. When I applied to work on this langur project the idea of going to graduate school at Stony Brook was in the back of my mind, especially if I ended up liking Carola and Andreas. Well, they are both wonderful people, would be terrific to work with, and it would make the future a lot more clearer if I made a smooth transition from working with them here to having one of them as an advisor at school. But, I was already leaning away from the sort of questions they are asking in their research (I'd rather work from an applied conservation angle) and now talking with Eileen and Chris I am even more turned off by the school. Basically they haven't told me one positive thing about the school (other than some of the people they work with). To make a long story short, the campus is a commuter campus so there is no "community" feel and they can't live on the stipend they receive because of high costs of living in the area (Long Island, NY). They are both incredibly in debt from student loans. So, I decided Stony Brook is not for me, but now I am back to the beginning of trying to figure out what to do next.

I'm really questioning whether or not I want to submit myself to the stress of graduate school at all (Eileen told me the first two years were the worst years of her life and I have heard similar stories from other people). And, if I still decide to apply I still haven't figured out what the heck I want to study. I need to find a specific research interest. So, I'm enjoying my time here but I haven't gotten any closer choosing my next path.