I’ve started this blog in a somewhat secret manner. By secret I mean it’s not attached to my social media accounts. If readers stumble upon it fine but really it’s for me and I hope to keep it that way for now so that I can write honestly and openly. I want a space to catalogue the things I learn without the pressure of turning them into polished articles that are thematically appropriate for the site. This is the catch-all space intended to track my journey from one career trajectory into the next. Namely from a career in marketing to one in animal behavior and ethology. Perhaps even with a bent towards fish behavior and cognition.
I knew I wanted to make a pivot somewhere back in 2017 or 2018 but one thing or another kept me from getting started. First it was not wanting to take out additional student loans. Then it was knowing I’d have to take the GRE, a standardized test I don’t believe in. Then (and this one stuck for a long time and was perhaps most insidious) it was wondering what on earth I’d do with a degree in marine biology or animal behavior once I got it. Marine biology is an incredibly saturated market with every other scuba diver having a degree in it (so being a diver and even a dive pro doesn’t even make me stand out).
Finally, once I’d figured out that it would be best to apply for animal behavior programs given my interest in animal cognition and as most marine bio programs do not truly study fish behavior and cognition outside of marine mammals, I had real trouble finding programs that studied cognitive ethology. In fact, this is still a problem I’m dealing with. I think I’ll likely be best served to study animal behavior and then possibly also study marine biology and then (yes, another then) go on to formalize with a PhD and study in more depth.
So far the U.S., where I’m presently based, is looking pretty bad in terms of programs. Most programs related to animal behavior are supported in part or entirely by the agricultural industry, an abhorrent and abusive industry I want no part of. Help people figure out how to raise, feed and manage animals so they can be better slaughtered? No thank you.
Though I know animal welfare is an important sub-sector of animal behavior, it’s not where I want to focus given it’s close relationship to the ag industry. I know we need the people to make conditions better for animals in those situations however, so kudos to all those studying it. Hopefully one day we’ll live in a vegan world.
Rather, I want to focus on furthering what we know about animal cognition and behavior in natural settings, or indeed in relationship to humans. I do not want to focus on animals as widgets for use by humans. I want to help advance the science, help animals become recognized for the incredible conscious beings they are.
While I am finally registered to take an Applied Animal Behavior certificate through the University of Washington to truly dig into whether or not I want to pursue this course at the Masters level and possibly further, I still have a lot more to learn and to refresh. I need to bone up on my psychology research methods, need to take a statistics course, and need to learn R programming. I’d like to hit the ground running next year if I decided to go for it and do the Masters.