Another Week, Another Post

Surprisingly (or perhaps not), I feel I have very little to say this week. The last seven days have passed without incident, droning ever onwards as any other mundane set of circumstances. I map routes, I call landowners, I drive places, I collect data, I drive back, I come home, I check my email (to find that no professors- prospective grad advisers and former college professors alike- have yet replied), I read, I go to bed. All the while I feel a little lost here, as if somehow I'm stuck in a different plane, marooned in a strange little town amidst an endless sea of prairie while the rest of the world keeps pace with itself.

When I write these entries I often wonder if I'm not just talking to myself. I know that a few other people do read this, but "this" has largely become a strongly one-sided conversation, and I wish, sometimes, that there were more of an exchange, a give and take of sorts. A little existential tonight, I suppose, but it's how I'm feeling.

I find myself contemplating if the rest of my life will be like this- me off in some distant, remote place, far removed from the lives of family and friends, writing about my "adventures" and wishing, instead, for instant messaging, or Skype, or a satellite phone call, in lieu of an endless tirade written about, and largely to, myself. It will be the price I'll have to pay, I suppose, to do what I love. I wonder how often field biologists deal with this particular brand of loneliness... Or perhaps I should call it "alone-ness," as that's more of what it truly is.

This week I started vegetation surveys, which have been both much better and just as bad as I expected them to be. The good? This week they've mostly been in places with which I'm familiar, making navigation less challenging and saving time driving. Additionally, we're far enough past the growing season here that it's nearly impossible to key many of the grasses out to species, which means I've been able to group various species into broad categories- another huge time saver. The bad? Even with broad classifications, vegetation surveys are extremely tedious (not to mention boring, at least to me), and the sites are all still two hours or so from the office.

Still, things have been progressing more quickly than I initially imagined, and, barring car trouble, inclement weather, or "Do-It-Now" assignments from Dwayne, I should be able to have the veg surveys finished by October 1st. This will require two marathon work days on the Montana/Wyoming border, split by a night camping... Not something to which I'm looking forward, but I'm desperately trying to think of a way to bribe Ayme into coming along to make it less painful. Ayme, if you happen to be reading this, please come along to make it less painful. I'd appreciate it. Thanks.

I have 31 work-days left in my internship. Six weeks and one day. Maybe less, if I finish my work and finally get the chance to take all the time I've accrued from working long days, off.

Then comes the real trouble, however: What am I going to do then? It's a terrible time to have graduated, to be out of school. The economy is crap, hundreds of thousands of people are out of work, and nearly all of them are clambering for jobs, making it hard for a recent graduate to find anything. I'm simply out-competed, instantaneously, by people with more experience. Not to mention the fact that I'm looking for employment during an odd time-slot, from November to August, since (if everything goes according to plan) I'll be heading to graduate school. Who needs someone to work from November to August? No one.

I'm looking mostly for internships, temporary jobs geared towards the young and inexperienced, those who will work for lower wages and no insurance and have to consent to being pushed around a lot because they're young and inexperienced. But internships geared towards someone with my particular skill set are hard to come by in winter months, since fieldwork largely ceases between late September and mid-October in the northern hemisphere. Internships in related fields (naturalism, environmental education, wildlife rehabilitation, etc.) tend to be unpaid, last only three or four months months, or have two sections, one in spring running from January to July or August, and one in fall from August or September to December. It puts me in an odd spot, done with my current internship too late to work the fall sessions but far too early for the spring. What would I do with myself for two months without a job?

So most evenings I come home, walk Capone, and instantly afterwards hit the internet, scouring websites and search engines and forums and Listservs tyring to find something, anything in which I might be interested, for which I might be qualified, that will carry me through the winter months... at the very least until April, when fieldwork generally starts up again.

Then, of course, I have to hope that I actually will get into graduate school somewhere, so I don't have to worry about finding yet another job at the end of next summer.

Like I said, a bit existential tonight, and scattered, too, now that I read back over this, but it's really all I've got. Perhaps if I can think of something cheerier, or more interesting, I'll post it this weekend...