The starting line

F

irst and foremost, I’m lucky enough to say that I’ve found my career in life, one that I love and I’m passionate about, although I’m not sure about what and where in concrete (specialization-wise), I know that my thing is microbiology. That is why I wasn’t a hundred percent sure about what to expect from this course; I sure love nature: walking through narrow trails surrounded by vegetation of all heights whilst listening to my thoughts and other curious and shy living beings, sitting down on some rock in the summit of a random hill and observing how small we all are. Did you notice how small we are? Every time I think of it, it blows my mind. We are so small, yet we believe we are the biggest. I also love taking pictures, as a matter of fact photography is one of my hobbies; I usually only take pictures of nature because I like it later to watch them all over again, and it helps me remember things that we usually forget in our daily basis; how special we are to be here. However, I didn’t know whether that would be enough to like natural history; and then I took my first class. We started playing with colors which brought back a feeling that was deeply buried inside of me, that child that we all have inside came all the sudden, and all the other thousands of thoughts that normally live in my brain faded out. I could remember how much I loved to paint when I was in high school, and being honest, in a million years I would have ever thought that in my fourth year of college I would be painting. They think that by choosing science you must forget the artist we all have inside, but the reality is that art is to science what asphalt is to roads.

After, we went outside, finally. The very first class I take outdoors since I’ve been in Canada. Whoever decides our education believes that indoors is the place where you learn, but a gardener don’t learn his job inside a building, stuck in a chair writing down whatever, neither does a build worker. So, someone who wants to know more about nature, apart from having a little bit of theory, has to learn from the nature itself, by observing, listening, drawing and writing. I had the chance to look more carefully to TRU campus which it made me realize that normally I see things, but I don’t pay attention to them. Besides the philosophical part, I also got the chance to learn drawing techniques which were helpful and, trust my accuracy when it comes to drawing.

The term “Natural history” might seem frightening and maybe boring when you first hear it because of the word “history”, your brain might associate this word with books and lots of study and memorizing, but it happens to be just a word. For me, natural history means the leaning of nature or even the land and planet we live in. Not always the books are going to give you the type of knowledge the landscape itself would give you.

By the end of the class, I already knew that I had made a good choice. That was the starting line of an experience that I will remember my whole life.