Great. Finally a fellow biologist in the forum!!!
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Nice meeting you, Prof!
That’s the intention!
Hi Becca really nice to meet you cheers HEC UK
she’s not the only one!
now, granted, I haven’t talked about it since it’s a bit of a sore point in my life.
but just a couple weeks ago I started a job with a nonprofit conservation group on a road ecology project, so finally a positive development on that end.
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@Mustela Nate that’s great. I’m happy to hear that there are more biologists among us. Also that you have a job in conservation. That’s a very difficult field to get into. Many students want to become conservationists but there are so few jobs, despite its importance.
My background is in ecology and I worked for 3 years in nature conservation in the UK after my biology studies. But I went back to university to get a PhD after I was asked by a conservation group to defend a site of nature conservation interest, in a public enquiry. I lost because the opponents paid a highly respected plant ecology professor to say that the site had no conservation value. The lawyer who cross-examined us always emphasised “Mr” when he asked me a question and emphasised “esteemed professor” when asking the paid expert. It made me realise I needed to be Dr or Prof, rather than just Mr.
I ended up doing a PhD on the symbiosis between plants and mycorrhizal fungi, which I have now worked on for 27 years! We engineer mycorrhizal fungi to improve yields of globally important crops in the tropics and increase ecosystem carbon sequestration. Sorry @lzrdlvr for this digression in the thread!
Hence my name on this forum …
That reminds me, I really must contact our avid gardener @mundeli because he mentioned mycorrhizal fungi in one of his gardening posts and I meant to reply to him.
… and I thought I was getting away from all that by learning guitar!!! 
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@Mustela that’s awesome! I also work in conservation. No need for apologies, @prof_thunder. I talk about my conservation work to anybody who will listen, and talk ~at~ those who don’t - ha. I started working as an intern in a program, finished my term and got asked by a prof at my past university to return for grad work, and made a way to satisfy both! So now my PhD work is directly involved in conservation. I never forget how fortunate a position I am in, which is why I fought so hard to stay through grad school.
Sorry for your lack of escape even in a guitar forum haha. But in the most non-grandiose way, there should be more of us, so I’m glad to know we’re making our way!
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That’s really fantastic Becca. Nate told me his fantasic career path in conservation as well by PM. So great to hear of you young people both making your way, doing something really important!
It’s good to have some distraction from your PhD though as there will also be some stressful tough moments, and likely some moments of doubt (although I don’t mention that to my PhD students and postdocs) and guitar learning is a pastime that is great as it still involves serious mental activity, even though its relaxing.
Now here’s something as a new guitarist that might motivate you in Biology: I’m a biologist and part of my work is on using microorganisms to sequester more carbon in the soil. This career path led me to get invited to Las Vegas to meet Bono and The Edge of U2. Bizarre how 2 completely different things; music and biology can come together. It’s a long story which I’m not going to bore people with here, and I actually turned down the invitation and didn’t go to Vegas, and didn’t meet them. So even biology can get you closer to music in some strange unexpected ways and possibly allow you to meet some of your guitar heros.
Not guitar related but: I also even got to meet the Dalai Lama through my work as a biologist.
lol @ “young people”
I’ll be 45 this year. I won’t say I’m “old” but I’ve owned a guitar for longer in my life than I haven’t. That avatar picture of mine is 22yrs old now, the JG forums scraped it from somewhere I used it in the past. Haven’t bothered to update it.
the job I just got is a job I should have been able to land over 20yrs ago. Sounds like Becca is enjoying much more success in the field than I am.
Well it’s all relative. I’m 61 so 45 is young to me. Anyway the most important thing is that you are now doing something you want to do and like. That’s the best thing.
Are you Mustela trying to weasel a comment out of us? 
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I figured it’d be something along those lines. Still, folks generally expect someone my age to have some level of establishment in their career.
@Mustela I’m not sure if “success” is how I would put it yet, just a crazy series of good luck. It’s definitely a tough field so I held on, white knuckled and all haha
@Prof_Thunder thank you so much for sharing that! My reason for picking up guitar was to have some sort of mental stimulation that’s productive, but I didn’t think those two worlds could collide. It gives me more hope!
Hey, take what you can get. Luck (the bad kind) has been part of what has hindered me. I also received some bad advice as an undergraduate that didn’t help matters. Over the years, friends have put me in touch with their children or other relatives of theirs going to school for something similar to me, and I’ve always been pretty free with sharing stuff that got me in trouble. At least if they know the pitfalls to avoid, maybe they’ll be able to have less trouble than I have.
I’m working through the application for “Associate Wildlife Biologist” professional certification because apparently the requirements have been modified a touch since I finished my master’s degree. In particular, a couple of items that kept me out because of my somewhat nontraditional degree pathway have been adjusted such that I might qualify. Currently going through all my transcripts (AND old course catalogs) to tally up what courses count for what requirements to see how much I have to lean into other experience to fill the rest.
That’ll be really advantageous because that cert carries some weight and has kept me out of the running for quite a few jobs over the years. After I go through that application, I also plan to look at the comparable cert for ecologists. The one thing that kept me out of that one in the past has been the fact that I didn’t know anyone with that cert who could write recommendation letters. It appears that requirement may have been changed, too.
Props to you if you can keep up the guitar while you’re working on your PhD. I was taking lessons for about the first 6mo of my master’s degree, but once my field work started up, decided to put those on hold. Unfortunately, a couple months after stopping lessons, it didn’t matter. My life got upended and I wasn’t able to do anything with the guitar for a long time. I mentioned in my own intro thread that I was diagnosed with leukemia and spent 18 days in a coma. So to start with, I was physically unable to play guitar. But even after I started get my finger dexterity back, I wasn’t allowed to play because treatment made me a spontaneous bleed risk. By the time all the restrictions on my activity were dropped, I was just out of the “habit” of doing anything with my guitar and it ended up being years before I picked it up again.
I learned once I started this wildlife job a few weeks ago that my new boss plays drums and when she was in grad school played in a band that did gigs at bars and stuff. Maybe we’ll start our own band of wildlife biologists at some point. lol
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Oh wow, that’s definitely a story. I’ve dealt with illness but certainly nowhere near that degree. Hope everything is all well with that now!
Yeah, I’ve met many folks lately who are trying to get into courses for certifications because jobs require more and more of them rather than degrees… not sure what I think of that
I think some professions do just fine going the cert route instead of getting degrees. Degrees don’t necessarily serve everybody best. Now, I do feel like my time at a liberal arts college is worth a whole lot more than the degree I got from it.
We’re kinda on the outskirts of the college question with our nephew. He’ll be a senior in high school this coming year. He was a pretty poor student until he found music (in high school). And when we learned that music was his thing and that his parents weren’t really supporting it all that much, we stepped in. Bought him a guitar a few years back and have been paying for private music lessons for him for the past year and a half. And might have let slip that college isn’t always necessary for every career. Now his parents are unhappy that he’s talking about not going, and by extension, us. We don’t know exactly what he wants to do, but he’s really passionate about music. Wouldn’t be surprised if he wanted to work in the music industry somewhere. And if he learns later that he wants a degree, the universities will still be there.