Plan A

Not much has changed since my last update. I am still working in Virginia, supplementing my small intern’s stipend by babysitting, and spending my evenings on the front porch of Leach House. This month pivoted around our one week GIS course that we taught for wildlife managers. I was in charge of organization and spent every moment of the course making sure people were happy and answering questions from 8am to 9pm. Despite a few bumps (we had a computer crash and trouble with moving data over the network), all of the evaluations were positive. I also did well with the one lecture I presented about digital data acquisition. Three months ago I knew absolutely nothing about the types of satellite imagery that is available for ecological monitoring and now I was able to give a talk about it. I enjoy the tangible benchmarks of knowledge that I have gained working in the lab. My entire lab notebook is filled with trials and errors and steps and directions about how to perform tasks that I didn’t even know existed three months ago. 

I think I am still recovering from the June 14-18 course, but my mood was cheered once again by the possibility of work in Thailand. This still seems like a long-shot possibility, but enough of an option that I have promised myself to pick up practicing Thai again. And, I have visions of future projects involving radio-tracking elephants or Dhole (wild dogs). If things would work out perfectly, they would go something like this: I would head over to Thailand from August to October to work as Peter’s eyes and ears (kind of monitoring the ongoing projects in Khao Yai National Park and making sure the data collection was being done appropriately). This would give me a great opportunity to meet his collaborators at Wild Aid and get a feel for the study area and community. I could begin to think about project options for graduate school. Upon return to the states in the fall (I would already have my schools narrowed down); I would apply to a doctoral program and look forward to future collaboration with the Smithsonian. Hopefully, Peter (my boss) will be able to give me a definite yes or no about sending me to Thailand by the end of the month. He also said I am welcome to stay as long as I like working in the GIS lab, meaning they are happy with my work here and meaning I don’t have to struggle to find another internship for fall.

I have finally gotten around to serious searching of graduate school programs in conservation. Today I found myself most interested in faculty at the University of Massachusetts, Amherst, and at University of Florida, Gainesville. The goal this week is to start emailing people I might be interested in working under. I have the added benefit of Peter’s permission to say I am affiliated with the Smithsonian and National Zoo. So, things are looking up and a plan is formulating. But, as always with this conservation biology field, the plan is flexible and open. I’m really just as confused as always :)