Okay, so thinking about the educational thing and gearing back up for that, I've been trolling the 'net looking at what sorts of courses I'd like and what major I'd pick to get those.
So I flipped through a few of the "look at descriptions of various majors" pages. How WEIRD does it feel to be looking at this stuff again? Last time I worried about this, I'd just turned 18, was green as grass, and was freaking out trying to carry a full load, maintaining a job, car, insurance, petrol, rent, utilities and somehow being able to afford my staple diet of ramen, tuna, mac-n-cheese and discounted produce at Walmart! =:-O Granted, I'd love to just be able to stay at school permanently and continue adding degrees in various things for the rest of my natural life, so maybe it's not so weird.
Anyhow, flashback aside, I browsed. Hn. Animal sciences didn't seem to fit... too geared on labratory animal management. Moving along... veterinary science... well, it covers a lot of my interests but it's too round-about since I want to focus more on behaviour and studying it. Could just look at psych stuff but that's not entirely it either. Da da da da...oh. Oh! Hey. What's this? Behaviour. Ethology. For animals. Well... that's certainly right up my alley.
"Scientific and objective study of animal behaviour." Yes, that sounds nice. I adore sinking my teeth into a juicy piece of theory and just plain watching what they do. I'd been wanting to add a sense of anthropology into the mix. Da da dum dum... "covers a range of scientific disciplines all concerned with what animals do and the neural mechanisms that enable them to do it." Ohhhh.... my inner geek sat up and paid attention - this might be something worth the look! Da da da da da, "...piles on some serious science... classes like anatomy, biology.." hmm, not bad! "...genetics, neurobiology, neuroscience..." helloooo nurse! That sounds yummy! "...behavioural evolution, zoology, cognition and sensory perception." Oh. Geeze. How soon can I sign up? My brain was drooling at the idea!
The rest sounds just as fun... jobs basically involve a lot of research projects to observe and attempt to understand animal sensation, cognition and behaviour.
Then comes the kicker:
As far as I can tell, the only universities to offer this as a major are in the States. *grumble mumble grumble*
Still researching of course and I know all those courses are available here seperately but I needed to gripe about that. Y'all have no bloody idea how ANNOYING it is, every single freaking time I find something really super cool - it's back in the States!
Other than that it's been quiet. Too HOT to train the dogs today. We all just flopped in melty-mode under the fans... three humans, three dogs and a cat together! Tomorrow I'm going to the dentist to deal with my wisdom teeth. I've avoided it for *mumble mumble* years because I really get the heebie jeebies about dental-work but now I've got no choice. The right top one has cracked, crumbled and is liable to get an infection if it hasn't already. It may have already, which may explain how frigging tired and thick-brained I've been feeling for the past few months. I've been getting way more sleep than I used to but feel 10x as whipped!
4 comments:
What a shit! Excuse my, erm, Aussie? Maybe you should start lobbying the nearest Uni that does anything remotely like this, to offer a course like the one you found O/S - give them a good inferiority complex, that tends to work with Aussies, they don't like to be the "poor cousin", yk?
Isn't this weather awful??? I can't complain, we have A/C, but still not good for going out (not that that stops us, being in this teeny house all five of us isn't worse than melting "out there")... Should get cooler in the next couple of days...
OMG - you had ME drooling when I read that!!!! LOL! Have you had a squiz at the "animal science" courses either at Mel uni or LaTrobe?
I wonder if it'd work Sif... I suppose if there isn't this sort of major maybe there's just not the demand for it jobwise? In the US, I'd say the majority of the research studies are sponsored by the unis or at least that's how it seems! Likewise you'd need facilty to start it and finding/hiring in people who are cutting edge in those areas may be more than they're willing to do without a big demand for it. It's worth asking, though!
Amanda, I did look at those... they looked strongly geared towards preparing someone to work with animals in a labratory setting or at least towards medical practice, ie experimenting on them or as a stepping stone to becoming a vet - health management, pharmacology, path, parasitology, biotech etc, much like the US has 2 years of pre-vet before you declare yourself a vet med major. I'm still looking around, so who knows, maybe there IS a course like I want... but geeeeezzzeee, it's so annoying to have everything I want where I moved AWAY from! Pft!
Yeouch hope those wisdom teeth don't cost much and I can so relate to the $$$ stuff. Thankfully I hope within the next few months it will all start paying off with Dh working so much between his job and tupperware!
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