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| Me during a soil biology practical @WUR. This is how I look like in real life |
My parents always told me I need to do a job I really want to do, especially because you will do it almost your whole life (unless you win the lottery or marry a very rich guy, which I think neither will happen to me haha). I am therefore still studying, just started my master at 21 years and having plans about getting a PhD. I will kind of tell you my life story below;
When I was following primary education, I already knew
I wanted to do something with biology in my life. At first I wanted to
be a vet, but through the years this changed to becoming a teacher at a
primary school. This also changed when I found out that the teachers at a
secondary school are specialized in a specific subject, so I made the
choice to become a biology teacher for secondary school. In this time I
still had a gnaw feeling about my choice, because I also really wanted
to do something with animals. I hesitated to become an animal
physiotherapist, but failed to get into the
study to become a regular physiotherapist (which you have to do in order to become an animal physiotherapist). I decided to become a
biology teacher anyway. Although I like teaching, the pupils can be
extremely annoying and it costed me a lot of energy. In both my 2015 and 2016 internship, I almost got an burn-out. This made me doubt if I really wanted to become a teacher at
all.
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| Me as a teacher. Yes there were really students there, but this was a small class and no one wanted to be filmed. |
Not only my experience in education (and the extremely
high workload btw. For god sakes, make classes smaller, make sure they work less hours and pay these people more!) made me doubt my choice, also my own previous study. I followed my
study at Fontys Tilburg and this is the best study I could ever imagine. My classmates were nice and my teachers even more (I am a
teacher-person, can't help it xD). I passed all my exams the first time, scored a lot of top 3 grades, got my propaedeutics in my first year and started BEES (Bilingual Education English Stream) as a minor in my
second year. Because of this minor I have my CAE certificate and if I
finsihed it I would have been able to give bilingual education without any
problems. Unfortunately I had to stop this minor, because I made the
choice to go to university. I made the transfer from HBO bachelor to WO
master and to do this I had to follow a pre-master programme. During a
pre-master programme you won't receive any money from the government and we couldn't afford this, another possibility needed
to be found and was provided in the form of a pre-master minor.
Because it wasn't possible for me to pass my study cum laude (because of a
6 for an internship -,-' ) I couldn't do a second minor. So I followed the pre-master, which I did in the first half of the acadamic year of 2015-2016, without finishing BEES. It
was a hard transfer for me. I had to do a lot of mathematics and
statistics, but I actually liked that. What I found the most difficult
thing I needed to do was all the reading. I am a really slow reader
(like 5 pages per hour) and we have a lot of reading to do!
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| A view of the campus in Wageningen |
Back to the FONTYS study. The teachers there helped me
a lot when I told them I wanted to do something different. This was a
process that actually already started in the fifth week of my study; our
study tour to Terschelling. Here I learned the beginning of my species
knowledge and I really was a noob at that time. Not only the teachers
inspired me, but also the island. You are still in the Netherlands, but
it doesn't feel that way all, it is really special. I also went back 3
times after this study tour, twice on my own and also a second time
with Fontys, as a teacher instead of a student. I really
fell in love with this island and when I hear an oystercatcher or curlew
I immediately get the feeling that I am back ^^.
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| Oystercatchers |
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| Samphire |
After Terschelling we had a few excursions for landscape ecology and I also joined the KNNV. The people from the KNNV and my teachers, Peter and Anton in special, were the ones that inspired me the most to do what I do today: going outside to enjoy nature and spot plants and birds (sometimes even insects :O). It made me realize that this offered me more energy than teaching at a secondary school, this was the point to consider the transfer to university to study ecology.
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| Guiding students on the Boschplaat of Terschelling |
In the last half of the academic year in 2015/2016 I passed
my last internship, which was really hard! It costed me a lot of
energy and the only thing I really liked was teaching
Technasium. You sit with 2 different classes in one room, but you are
there with 2-3 colleagues who can help you and because the pupils go to
work in small groups, you can actually have personal conversations with
them and get to know them better. These were the only lessons that gave
me energy instead of draining it. If I ever go back to teaching, it will be in a Montessori school or something or in university/HBO, but not the traditional secondary school anymore.
My goal now is to become one of the best ecologists by
studying at WUR and to become specialized in climate change and to battle it. When it is possible I want to get my PhD and be able
to protect and manage nature all over the world. This might be a big, no...huge,
goal, but I can't stop dreaming and have to believe in myself: I am a
stem cell :-).
My bigger goal is to do something to change the world entirely! We are destroying our ecosystems and the services they
provide. I try this myself by changing my diet from omnivorous to a plant-based diet and I am trying to reduce
water use and waste. I hope to inspire my readers to change as well, so
we can create a better world together!
I became a vegan, as I find this really helps the environment (especially with greenhouse gasses and water and land use!), but every step is a step in the right direction, so I don't care if you are a vegan and sometimes just can't handle yourself and eat an animal product. I actually just had a second detox period in which I just needed to eat some cheese and McDonald's (I have a hate-love relationship with McDonalds) :O. BTW the veggieburger and BBQ sauce at McDonalds are vegan, so you can still enjoy this -slipping your veins- fast food ;). Even if I can inspire you to become a part-time vegan, meaning that you don't compensate your vegan days with even more animal products on your non-vegan days, that is already a good thing ^^. Enjoy the blog and if you have any questions, just leave a comment.
Now in November 2016 I also started a new "hobby". I started to ring wild birds for research purposes. It is nice to do, as I have contact with birds you never see so up close and I help science gathering information about those birds. I also learn a lot about bird anatomy and recognizing even the most difficult species, even sexing some of them, which you couldn't looking through your binoculars.
Meet Frank, the male chaffinch (on the left) he is the first bird I completely ringed myself!
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