A simple enough question, why did
you choose to spend £9,000 and 3 years of your life studying marine biology? A
question that I'm asked more frequently on visit days and open days by
prospective students and their parents.
The honest answer I didn't. I came to
university to do Zoology, to learn about the big cats and wild animals of the
world. Marine Biology was never an option to me, my best friend at school had dreamed
of being a marine biologist, working with dolphins and the like. Now
of course that appealed but never struck home as reality with me. I guess my
perceptions of Zoology were equally idealistic though. However the first
introduction to marine science came in first year in a simple module looking at
human impacts on marine systems. It seemed an interesting choice, and I was
determined to avoid the protein related modules. The short (6 week) module was
a gentle introduction to the large topic but left me wanting more, the concept
seemed of worldwide importance to me but yet the world appears not to notice or
care about the damage we inflict on a system we know so little amount. I would
like to say there and then that I decided I would change the world, I didn’t
though. I waited for my marks and once they confirmed I knew nothing about
insects but everything about human impacts (relatively speaking of course) I
was considering changing course. At that point I remembered what a lecturer had
said to me in about week 8 of university, that perhaps I was doing the wrong
course. At the time I had panicked that perhaps university was a massive
mistake and I didn't really belong here. But in reality perhaps he saw all
along where my interests were. So I switched courses, a simple piece of
paper with two signatures was all it took. It made no real difference I still
took zoology modules but at least knew my focus wouldn't be insects for the
rest of my life.
As my degree progressed, the
opportunities that presented themselves were amazing, I have participated in fieldwork
in Uganda, Spain and Thailand as well as all over the UK. A simple stroll along
the beach became a fun identification exercise and friends relayed any thing
related to fish to me.
So now as I plan my future in
marine biological research, I would never ever have wanted to anything else at
University.
But you can't explain to a parent
or student who desperately wants to work with marine mammals that you love your
subject because you get to work on a beach in all weathers, go cockling,
spend hours sifting through mud to find all of the amphipods, spend days on end
in a lab with your PCRs failing, the library becomes your second home and that
once it works and the solution clicks into place it is the best feeling ever.
A close friend of mine who’s only
motivation for doing marine biology was the lure of dolphins and who still
aspires to do something with dolphins in her PhD, reminds me that someone
has to work with them. Which I suppose is true but in answer to that and I
guess to the simple question of Why marine biology? Is that the marine
environment is largely unknown and unexplored and I want to understand and
explore as much of that environment as I can, rather than study something
someone already has. As we say I want to find new science!
