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I laid down the other day and eventually took a nap, but while I was laying there I was thinking about all kinds of things. In my half comatose state I was really imagining what it would be like to work as an environmental analyst. You see in all my hunting for an income (i.e.: job), I was also trying to help out a new friend look for a job. And in the process of connecting one scientist to another I was reminded that I, too, am a scientist, and how important that is to me.

The job in question is that of environmental analyst.

Makela wrote:

You would be doing a lot of whatever people needed and would have time to figure out what your interests are. All year long, we have a contract with Southern California Edison to monitor tree cutters working up in the mountains and that is where a lot of people start. It is low pressure, but you could be gone a few days per week and get a good intro to sensitive plant and animals. That is a 4-5 hour RT, with some driving time once you're there. Then, during field season we need people to be in the field A LOT. That is when we are gone 4 days a week twice a month or so. We stay on-site and rent a house or stay at the Hilton in Santa Clarita. We go up early Monday and home late Thursday. You get burrs in your boots (and once or twice in my BUTT!!) and have to wear snake chaps and a lot of sunblock ALL DAY. There is also a fair amount of writing the reports that say "this is what we found, this is why it is significant, and this is what you need to do to mitigate impacts to this lil guy".

The question to ask is would you want to do this kind of work? Would this fit with your long term goals in some way? They are going to invest a lot of time training you and it takes a while to really understand this industry. It's kinda complicated at times. Learning the plants and animals takes time and a real interest in it. It doesn't happen, at least for lugheads like me, unless I work at it. But I really *WANT* to know this stuff, so it doesn't seem like work most days for me. I would want to see you do this only if this was one of your passions that you wanted to explore for a while to see how it felt.

It involves essentially helping developers develop property. We can talk pretty about what we do, but when the rubber hits the road, that is the boiled-down essence of our jobs. Our paychecks are from Dudek, but Dudek is funded almost exclusively by the development industry. We joke that we are "biostitutes". We all work very hard to help the developers follow the rules, and Dudek is extremely ethical because our reputation is on the line if we aren't. But at the end of the day, that industry is our bread and butter.

But enough about Makela, back to what I'm thinking:

Damn morals are always complicating things, aren't they? If you really think about any job a lot, it always leads back to something unpleasant. Especially in a country driven my military-industrial complex. But that's discussion for a different day...

So, what does it mean to help developers follow the law? It is a question of how implicated in the economic system one can be, and where is one guilt free, and the other guilty. Even at the EcoCenter for Alternative Fuel Education, the whole time I worked there our funding came pretty much exclusively from one generous donor who made his money… selling cars! And, yes, they were gasoline cars. All of them.

I have been thinking about my future a lot lately, and where I want it to go. I like to work hard, but I like to be the boss even more. So that led me to think I should start my own business. This is not a new idea, it is one I have had since I was a child. And lately I’ve been thinking about what I *could* do, perhaps even more than what I want to do.

And then suddenly there was this little thought: I could go back to science. I have been going down this other path for nearly five years, and I didn’t ever stop to think that I could back up, and go down the path I was on before. I consider myself a biologist, an ecologist. But how long can I really claim that if I am out of the field? And what part of myself will I lose when that claim is no longer accurate?