On Liz's list, I would fall under category I. How frustrated you must have
been with the student you describe. One would assume that a person with a
degree in plant ecology ought to be able to i.d. plants! It bugs me to no
end when I'm around undergrad (and grad, unfortunately) bio majors that have
such a narrow, lab-oriented focus that they know nothing about natural
systems - the kind of people that believe they would melt if rained on.
Unfortunately, I'm finding that it is more advantageous to make oneself
sound like a "Liz - category 2" person when it comes to acquiring grant
money. Natural history is not as "sexy" as, for example, gene regulatory
mechanisms - at least in the eyes of funding sources I've submitted to.
While I think studying natural history on any level is exciting (or at least
interesting), many others in high places think such pursuits are rather
mundane.
- Mike Bessert
Lincoln, NE
on 2/20/02 6:33 PM, Bruce Stallsmith at fundulus_at_hotmail.com wrote:
> Liz is absolutely on the money, which is a sad fact. I have a graduate
> student who works for me as a laboratory teaching assistant in our freshman
> biology labs. She came to us with a B.S. in plant ecology from U.Cal. San
> Francisco, a good school, but was totally unable to use a microscope (quite
> literally!). Her plant ID skills were poor... What the hey? This was all the
> result of NO FIELDWORK. And this is certainly the trend of late.
>
> --Bruce Stallsmith
> Huntsville, AL, US of A
>
>> I forwarded some posts to a non-list member. She asked me to send her
>> comments to the list.
>>
>> Chuck Church
>> Indianapolis, Indiana USA
>>
>>>> Which isn't to say that Gene doesn't know anything about
>> ichthyology..... merely that it's not his principal pursuit.>>
>>
>> Yes, when I went to grad school in ecology I was floored to discover that a
>> good number of my fellow grad students were not naturalists. How did they
>> *get* there if they weren't into nature?? I wondered. My advisor
>> distinguished between people interested in critters and people interested
>> in processes (he is the first kind). The first kind of person wants to
>> know about fish ecology, population dynamics, evolution, behavior, etc.
>> because s/he wants to understand fish better. The second kind of person
>> thinks a fish is a useful example of some abstract process, like the
>> evolution of sexual selection or physiological adaptation to saline
>> environments. The worst type of people - *YAWN* - are those who are just
>> interested in what genes do. You can't even SEE a gene, for
>> petessake. It was beyond fathoming!
>>
>> Liz
>> (who wishes you could somehow get a PhD in "the natural history of the
>> macroorganisms of the eastern US")
>
>
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