One year ago today I landed in Bangkok, tired from a really long flight, worried about how I was going to get out of the airport with all my baggage/field equipment, feeling very aware of the fact that I was completely alone on the other side of the world, and about to take on my biggest adventure to date.
Thailand was not my first field experience – that was way back in 2002, attending a field school in Belize watching howler monkeys. And I participated in a 2nd field school, later that same year, in Panama (again watching howlers). But Thailand was my first time actually doing real fieldwork, as a researcher, collecting real, usable data, not just learning skills as a student. And arriving here one year ago today, it was the farthest from home I’d ever been on my own; no family, no friends, no teachers, no other students around to help me out. One year ago today, I left home knowing I was parting with the safety and comfort of friends, family and the classroom to put my knowledge, strength, mental ingenuity and psyche to the test. Landing in a foreign, far away land, where I didn’t speak the language, and had only three acquaintances, I was moving into an empty house to live by myself for at least one year.
Now, this trip was not my first to Thailand, I’d been here once before for a 6 month ‘trial period’ back in 2007, so I wasn’t completely oblivious to what I was getting myself into. And though I was here a few years ago mainly to gather information on gibbons, I also spent a vast amount of time focusing my attention on learning about Thailand itself, the people, the culture, the way things worked. I knew the field assistants that worked for my professor already. I knew they could speak enough English that we could basically communicate with each other, and I knew that if I didn’t take initiative to connect with other people around the park that I would be ignored and disregarded as a strange foreigner who was just ‘hanging around here for a while’.
My first 6 months in Thailand back in 2007 where difficult (to put it lightly). Tumultuous, isolating, physically grueling, emotionally straining and just plain hard, it was a really complicated time – for both of us. Because at that time I wasn’t alone, I had come with another student, Matt, and THANK GOODNESS we had each other to go through it all together! While the forest was serene, providing hours of tranquility hanging out with the gibbons (after we learned how to find and follow them), our time outside of the forest was chaotic and demanding. It seemed like anything that could go wrong, did go wrong, and at the end of that 6 months, my time in Thailand had effectively ruined/sabotaged all of my close connections with people back in Carbondale (either through break ups, moving away, or emotional strain on relationships) – this made coming out of the forest and going back to school extremely unpleasant and I had a lot of difficulty dealing with it.
But even though those first 6 months were tremendously demanding, both of us became quite skilled gibbon researchers, and I enjoyed every minute spent with the gibbons. I paid attention to every detail of their intricate lives. I came to adore each individual for their own unique personality and character, knowing from now on I simply always had to know what was going on in their lives as best I could, I could never leave them. Amusingly, sometimes when I just stood with them, overwhelmed with happiness I would exclaim “I just love them so much!” Thailand was hard, but I would be back. I had to come back. I would always be back. I could never leave the gibbons for too long.
When the time came again, two years later, to return to Thailand to gather data for my dissertation, I suddenly got really scared. Even though I love the gibbons, all the memories of the turbulent life outside the forest and all the unpleasantries of returning from the field came flooding back. Every possible doubt ran through my mind about doing it again. Yes, I loved the gibbons, but before I was part of a team, could I do it alone? It was grueling and tough; could I go through that again? Would I have to? Would this time be so hard, or worse, even harder?
Sometimes making the right decision is the hardest choice. And knowing your making the right decision doesn’t make it any easier. Coming back to Thailand, this time on my own, was a tough call. But it was the only call. This is my chosen path, this is my calling. Sometimes it’s hard to do what you love because what you love puts great demands on you to live up to your full potential as a human being, asking you to step up to the plate and be the best person you can be. It’s so much easier to divert to a safe place, a more comfortable choice; living an uncomplicated life appears to be so much more appealing. But appearances can be deceiving. :)
My first month here this time around made me appreciate Matt more than I ever have before in my life! …Driving that car is damn hard! It wasn’t that I over- or under-estimated you, I quite simply had no idea! You made it look so easy!
Now I make it look easy…and it’s a pretty good feeling. :)
This year I have learned more about who I am, what I am capable of, what it means to be alive, what it is to be a good person, and what it means to be human, than any other year in the past. Nevertheless looking back, I appreciate how each previous year has prepared me for the challenges I faced throughout this year.
I am so grateful, not only for the opportunity to be here, but also for the foundation of work that has been done here at Khao Yai in the past by my professor, Ulrich Reichard, because I understand the magnitude of his effort and recognize that I could not do the work that I want to do, ask the questions I want to ask, or accomplish the necessary tasks to promote gibbons that I want to accomplish, without the essential basis and plethora of life history information that he has attained, which I now build on as the future unfolds.
From trapping rats to getting rid of poisonous snakes in the house, from evading elephants while running to watching forest pigs run away from me, from becoming a semi-transient member of a monkey troop to lounging in the forest with gibbons, I have spent the whole year in complete awe of how remarkable this adventure has been. Even the bad moments are good. And perhaps the best part about the whole year has been that, even though every day can be considerably demanding, I appreciate and value those challenges so much! They are exciting, stimulating, exhilarating; everyday is so rewarding.
Nine years ago, as I was about to embark on my prospective vocation as a primatologist, I sat in a classroom two days before leaving for Belize with 17 strangers. Oddly enough, at the time I was actually the only person in the room who had never spent much time studying primates. The university I went to didn’t offer courses on primates and I had flown across the country to participate in this special course joining 17 other students who had been working on their BAs in primate studies together for the last 4 years. I didn’t know anyone in the room. I barely knew anything about primates, and I knew nothing about field work. The instructor asked us: “Why did you sign up for this course? And, what are you most afraid of about it?”
One by one, we went around the room and people spoke candidly about fears of spiders and snakes, almost everyone explained that he or she wanted to use this field school as an opportunity to find out whether or not they could, in fact, do field work and whether or not they would “like it”. I was the last person to speak and everyone sat there staring at me, the lone stranger flown in from another part of the country, waiting for me to speak.
“To be honest,” I said, “I already know that I can do this. I already know that I want to do this for the rest of my life, otherwise I wouldn’t be here. I’m here because I need experience to get me where I want to go in the future with graduate school. And I’m not afraid of anything about it at all, though perhaps naively I haven’t really thought about what there is to be afraid of; I’m just really excited to go.” It felt awkward to be saying that, since I was blatantly contradicting almost everyone in the room. I’m sure others may have found it to be arrogant at the time, but it was the truth and I couldn’t think of anything else to say.
These days, oftentimes people I meet ask me what I do and I say: I study apes. They respond with “Wow, that’s amazing!” then pause and follow up with “what are you going to do with that?”
Why did I choose this demanding, complicated journey into primatology? I have no idea. I just knew I could do it. I guess because I wanted to do it. I didn’t know before heading to Belize how much I would love gibbons in the future, I actually didn’t even know what gibbons were back then. :) And when people respond with amazement to my extraordinary answer to an ordinary question, I’ll be honest, I’m pretty pleased with myself, because it’s a little reminder that I followed my dream and my heart even when my head couldn’t always explain things clearly.
So, “what am I going to do with this?”
Well, I guess the only answer is this: I’m going to live my best life; challenging, demanding, complicated… satisfying. And I’m going to appreciate every adventurous minute of it.
This year I became a real person.
Next year I finish my degree and enter the real world.
And as my journey continues, I hope I make a real difference in the world.
Thailand was not my first field experience – that was way back in 2002, attending a field school in Belize watching howler monkeys. And I participated in a 2nd field school, later that same year, in Panama (again watching howlers). But Thailand was my first time actually doing real fieldwork, as a researcher, collecting real, usable data, not just learning skills as a student. And arriving here one year ago today, it was the farthest from home I’d ever been on my own; no family, no friends, no teachers, no other students around to help me out. One year ago today, I left home knowing I was parting with the safety and comfort of friends, family and the classroom to put my knowledge, strength, mental ingenuity and psyche to the test. Landing in a foreign, far away land, where I didn’t speak the language, and had only three acquaintances, I was moving into an empty house to live by myself for at least one year.
Now, this trip was not my first to Thailand, I’d been here once before for a 6 month ‘trial period’ back in 2007, so I wasn’t completely oblivious to what I was getting myself into. And though I was here a few years ago mainly to gather information on gibbons, I also spent a vast amount of time focusing my attention on learning about Thailand itself, the people, the culture, the way things worked. I knew the field assistants that worked for my professor already. I knew they could speak enough English that we could basically communicate with each other, and I knew that if I didn’t take initiative to connect with other people around the park that I would be ignored and disregarded as a strange foreigner who was just ‘hanging around here for a while’.
My first 6 months in Thailand back in 2007 where difficult (to put it lightly). Tumultuous, isolating, physically grueling, emotionally straining and just plain hard, it was a really complicated time – for both of us. Because at that time I wasn’t alone, I had come with another student, Matt, and THANK GOODNESS we had each other to go through it all together! While the forest was serene, providing hours of tranquility hanging out with the gibbons (after we learned how to find and follow them), our time outside of the forest was chaotic and demanding. It seemed like anything that could go wrong, did go wrong, and at the end of that 6 months, my time in Thailand had effectively ruined/sabotaged all of my close connections with people back in Carbondale (either through break ups, moving away, or emotional strain on relationships) – this made coming out of the forest and going back to school extremely unpleasant and I had a lot of difficulty dealing with it.
But even though those first 6 months were tremendously demanding, both of us became quite skilled gibbon researchers, and I enjoyed every minute spent with the gibbons. I paid attention to every detail of their intricate lives. I came to adore each individual for their own unique personality and character, knowing from now on I simply always had to know what was going on in their lives as best I could, I could never leave them. Amusingly, sometimes when I just stood with them, overwhelmed with happiness I would exclaim “I just love them so much!” Thailand was hard, but I would be back. I had to come back. I would always be back. I could never leave the gibbons for too long.
When the time came again, two years later, to return to Thailand to gather data for my dissertation, I suddenly got really scared. Even though I love the gibbons, all the memories of the turbulent life outside the forest and all the unpleasantries of returning from the field came flooding back. Every possible doubt ran through my mind about doing it again. Yes, I loved the gibbons, but before I was part of a team, could I do it alone? It was grueling and tough; could I go through that again? Would I have to? Would this time be so hard, or worse, even harder?
Sometimes making the right decision is the hardest choice. And knowing your making the right decision doesn’t make it any easier. Coming back to Thailand, this time on my own, was a tough call. But it was the only call. This is my chosen path, this is my calling. Sometimes it’s hard to do what you love because what you love puts great demands on you to live up to your full potential as a human being, asking you to step up to the plate and be the best person you can be. It’s so much easier to divert to a safe place, a more comfortable choice; living an uncomplicated life appears to be so much more appealing. But appearances can be deceiving. :)
My first month here this time around made me appreciate Matt more than I ever have before in my life! …Driving that car is damn hard! It wasn’t that I over- or under-estimated you, I quite simply had no idea! You made it look so easy!
Now I make it look easy…and it’s a pretty good feeling. :)
This year I have learned more about who I am, what I am capable of, what it means to be alive, what it is to be a good person, and what it means to be human, than any other year in the past. Nevertheless looking back, I appreciate how each previous year has prepared me for the challenges I faced throughout this year.
I am so grateful, not only for the opportunity to be here, but also for the foundation of work that has been done here at Khao Yai in the past by my professor, Ulrich Reichard, because I understand the magnitude of his effort and recognize that I could not do the work that I want to do, ask the questions I want to ask, or accomplish the necessary tasks to promote gibbons that I want to accomplish, without the essential basis and plethora of life history information that he has attained, which I now build on as the future unfolds.
From trapping rats to getting rid of poisonous snakes in the house, from evading elephants while running to watching forest pigs run away from me, from becoming a semi-transient member of a monkey troop to lounging in the forest with gibbons, I have spent the whole year in complete awe of how remarkable this adventure has been. Even the bad moments are good. And perhaps the best part about the whole year has been that, even though every day can be considerably demanding, I appreciate and value those challenges so much! They are exciting, stimulating, exhilarating; everyday is so rewarding.
Nine years ago, as I was about to embark on my prospective vocation as a primatologist, I sat in a classroom two days before leaving for Belize with 17 strangers. Oddly enough, at the time I was actually the only person in the room who had never spent much time studying primates. The university I went to didn’t offer courses on primates and I had flown across the country to participate in this special course joining 17 other students who had been working on their BAs in primate studies together for the last 4 years. I didn’t know anyone in the room. I barely knew anything about primates, and I knew nothing about field work. The instructor asked us: “Why did you sign up for this course? And, what are you most afraid of about it?”
One by one, we went around the room and people spoke candidly about fears of spiders and snakes, almost everyone explained that he or she wanted to use this field school as an opportunity to find out whether or not they could, in fact, do field work and whether or not they would “like it”. I was the last person to speak and everyone sat there staring at me, the lone stranger flown in from another part of the country, waiting for me to speak.
“To be honest,” I said, “I already know that I can do this. I already know that I want to do this for the rest of my life, otherwise I wouldn’t be here. I’m here because I need experience to get me where I want to go in the future with graduate school. And I’m not afraid of anything about it at all, though perhaps naively I haven’t really thought about what there is to be afraid of; I’m just really excited to go.” It felt awkward to be saying that, since I was blatantly contradicting almost everyone in the room. I’m sure others may have found it to be arrogant at the time, but it was the truth and I couldn’t think of anything else to say.
These days, oftentimes people I meet ask me what I do and I say: I study apes. They respond with “Wow, that’s amazing!” then pause and follow up with “what are you going to do with that?”
Why did I choose this demanding, complicated journey into primatology? I have no idea. I just knew I could do it. I guess because I wanted to do it. I didn’t know before heading to Belize how much I would love gibbons in the future, I actually didn’t even know what gibbons were back then. :) And when people respond with amazement to my extraordinary answer to an ordinary question, I’ll be honest, I’m pretty pleased with myself, because it’s a little reminder that I followed my dream and my heart even when my head couldn’t always explain things clearly.
So, “what am I going to do with this?”
Well, I guess the only answer is this: I’m going to live my best life; challenging, demanding, complicated… satisfying. And I’m going to appreciate every adventurous minute of it.
One Year in Thailand: year in review.
This year I became a real person.
Next year I finish my degree and enter the real world.
And as my journey continues, I hope I make a real difference in the world.
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