by Laura Cabanzo-Olarte
The plane is landing and seeing through the window of the plane I see mountains and windmills in the middle of them that the first thing they produce in me is emotion and joy of arriving at a new place to meet. However, you cannot avoid the anxiety and nervousness that produces the idea that I will be (in what seemed to me) a long time sharing with new people and returning to the field for the first time after spending these years working in lab to continue learning about ecology and the tropics. Day zero: the moment of greetings, quickly dust off the English, our presentations and get to work! To work in the field! What a content update! I had to remember certain contents. ¡Ouch! And as each teacher went by and doing our intro walks in each biological station I start to discuss about ecology, data analysis and how you can ask questions, make hypotheses and predictions. ¡100% scientific method! What a joy! I felt that I was in the right place, that I was going to be stimulating despite the work it was going to take to go through this course but that I was going to be productive.
I always enjoyed the field work and did it again this time. New biological stations arrived and with them new challenges. Working in Cabo Blanco was what I enjoyed most, thinking together with Rieka and Janet about the behavior of hermit crabs. And with Sabrina, think in specific hypotheses and predictions associated with the movement pattern of these animals between the forest and the beach. This was the moment when I began to think about how I should take my own research but in the field. How to ask new questions related to my research that would allow me to contribute more in a scenario of emerging diseases in frogs. From there my head began to imagine even more. In Monteverde, the conservation module made this increase, I learned that you should consider a broad and not so academic public to apply your knowledge in wildlife conservation strategies. Listening to Esteban and Obe's proposals to conserve species and raise people's awareness about this made me want to have my own approach to help in frogs’ conservation in the future. And so, I wanted more and more to sit down to think again in my own approach of my research. More than one person was right when they told me that this course was going to change my way of thinking and seeing things. And it changed, I arrived at home and I already want to transform enough of my project or at least give a better approach to everything I learned.
And they will ask: what happened to the anxiety of meeting new people? Well, it is obvious that this happened over time. Knowing the contexts and personalities of another 8 people enriched me greatly. And it's more fun when you don't have internet access. In Cuericí and Las Alturas, thinking and writing for the grant workshop, I felt like in my country Colombia, not only because of the landscape but also because we always ate, talked and laughed, we knew that we should work and strive, but we never lost our disposal to be together and share even what we didn't like. We were a diverse group, with different backgrounds what made our discussions and competencies extremely rich and productive. I will always appreciate that.
Finally, all these experiences were always complementary by Sofía, Pati and Pablo, excellent coordinators with we shared. Thank you! You made a very complete course, workshop on conservation, on scientific writing, grants and scientific communication! An adventure outside the laboratory!
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