Ramblings from a recent master’s grad: from field work to full-time employment

by Natasha Barlow

I still don’t know what I’m doing and what I want out of life. However, in the hopes that some of my experiences may resonate with others, I wanted to share a few tidbits of things that have made me a better scientist, and a better person. These are disjointed thoughts, and are in no specific order, but I hope they will be useful to anyone in the environment field (or otherwise) thinking about jobs, schooling, and life in general.
 
Personal Development:

• Don’t be afraid to ‘look stupid’. I struggle with some crippling anxiety at times, and it’s taken me a while to realize that I can pretend to know what I’m doing for only so long before it gets exhausting and overwhelming. It’s okay not to know. It’s okay to risk a minute of what you perceive to be as public humiliation to obtain the answer that you need to work better, feel more confident, and produce quality results. Struggling by yourself is an incredibly lonely place to be and it doesn’t need to be that way.
• Invest in therapy, whether it’s traditional therapy (which is the route I took at the end of my degree), prayer (also me), meditation, yoga, nature hikes, etc. Whatever you need to do to take rest – take it. Grad school – and life in general – is a marathon. You are not alone in your struggles, your insecurities, your self-loathing, or your darkness. You can make the choice to stay where you are, or you can change it. It’s hard, it’s scary, it sucks, and it’s unfair. But what do you have to lose by continually trying the infinite amount of new (healthy) things until you find the one that works for you? You have the power to change what you need to change, and learn how to accept what doesn’t need to be tampered with. I’m very much still working on this with cognitive behavioural therapy, and I’m not where I want to be, but I’m learning how to believe that I’ll eventually get there. 

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Trapping greater sage-grouse (Centrocercus urophasianus) and fitting them with transmitters to track their movement throughout energy development, reclaimed, and undisturbed areas in northeastern Wyoming, USA. 

Your work:

• You can get answers from any data, but it doesn’t mean it’s right. Working hard to minimize bias throughout a project, from objectives to conclusions, and choosing the correct statistical methodology, will ensure that you’re closer to the real, correct answer. Avoid thoughts regarding ‘proving’ anything – let the data tell you what’s real and what isn’t, without your inherent bias of what you think the data should tell you. 
• Keep in contact with collaborators, partners, etc., from the moment you have an idea, until the end. This ensures that you’re collecting data that’s actually useable for policy makers, biologists, landowners, etc. This allows you to bridge the gap between the general public and scientists, and re-build the public’s trust in the scientific method.
• Keep in mind your objective(s). Don’t be afraid to ask others, and yourself, what is our intention? What question(s) are we asking? What is this data being collected for? How are we going to analyze this data after we collect it? As my master’s advisor says, “you can only answer a question as well as you ask it” – Dr. Brad Fedy

Jobs and School:

• Master’s thesis defenses are terrifying, but it was better than I expected. Practice doesn’t make perfect – nothing we do is perfect, so try to stop aiming for it or you’ll be disappointed. Try to get to a point where you’re proud of yourself with what you’ve accomplished, even if it still didn’t go the way you expected. You can’t control everything you yourself do, so there’s no way you can perfectly control others, or a situation – and that’s okay. Most professors are good at kindly stringing you along a chain of questioning to get you to the place where they want you to be in your answer. That’s something that I didn’t realize (even though I had seen defenses before) until I had my own. Practice with lab-mates, practice in the room you’re presenting in – it’s okay to be nervous, but just keep going.
• Applying for jobs in the environmental field sucks. Work hard to get the experiences you want and work hard during them. The environmental field is small – really, really, really, small. I’m no expert and by no means have I had all of the experiences that some people have had, but I’ve worked hard. I’ve done jobs in south-central British Columbia with yellow-breasted chats, waterbird work across Ontario, overwintering warbler ecology in Jamaica, and forest birds at risk work in southern Ontario. I was able to gain these experiences throughout my undergrad since I was in a co-operative (co-op) education program. Co-op is an incredible way to get your hands dirty, network (cue buzzword), and try new things. I primarily focused on field work because, well, I love it, but I’ve also done a bit of policy and fishery work. Guess what, I still applied for SO MANY JOBS at the end of my master’s. I was only interviewed for 3, and was only offered 1. You have to work at it, and be diligent and dedicated in your job search. It’s hard, but that’s what it takes. Just keep trying. 

About the Author

Natasha L. Barlow (B.Sc, M.E.S), is a Boreal Conservation Project Specialist at Birds Canada. Her master’s research was focused on evaluating the umbrella species concept of the greater sage-grouse, at fine-spatial scales for nesting Brewer’s sparrows (Spizella breweri), as well as the influence of landscape-scale habitat reclamation on songbird abundance. She is interested in evidence-based approaches that focus on the complex realm of human-natural resource interactions that also work to rectify the disconnect between the public and scientists in regard to wildlife conservation. Connect with her on Instagram (@natashalbarlow) or Twitter (@nlynnbarlow) to chat about research, or to join her birding.