As the year starts coming to an end, so does this module. This module has had its ups and downs but it has been very helpful for me and possibly everyone else doing it too.
I have decided to take a year off education as the last three years at Bangor University have been very busy. After my year off I will come back to do a masters, and hopefully link it towards what my dissertation is about.
In that gap year, I want to get as much experience as I can to improve my CV and more experience for my future career. I have been to Arizona on the field trip twice that Bangor University does to help out on it.
I have also done volunteering around Bangor helping clear heath and other plants to help the herpetofauna and also create fire breaks to prevent a large scale fire in the future. Before coming to Bangor University, I did volunteering for Exmoor Zoo which opened my eyes to zoo work which was hard but very enjoyable.
The seminars
I attended multiple seminars from active research which were all from different backgrounds. This helped me understand how many different paths of research there were and how they all got to where they are today.
I attended many different societies for the seminars I have written about, such as: Herpetological Society in Bangor, Entomology Society in Bangor, Venom Day which is organised by Herp Soc, and also The Amphibian and Reptile Conservation Trust organised ARC-BHS.
From these organisations, I wrote about many different topics. The main ones that interest me the most are:
- Medical Complications Following Slow Loris Evolution
- The Evolution of Centipede Venom Composition
- Toadally Screwed – Toad invasion on Madagascar
- Natterjack Toad Monitoring and Conservation in Ireland
- How Dinosaurs Walked on Earth
- Bee-search
These topics are overall interesting and would recommend people to do extra reading, especially on the toad invasion on Madagascar. As this can help how one species could potentially kill off a whole biodiversity, as all the animals found on Madagascar cannot be found anywhere else in the world.
Workshops
Assessment centre –
The assessment centre was useful in some ways, but I didn’t enjoy it that much. The fake interview part was the most useful thing out of the whole workshop, but before that we all got to know each other.
In a real interview you wouldn’t have an ‘ice breaker’ with the interviewer, you would most likely shake hands and exchange names. For other people who haven’t been to any interviews before might have helped, but having done a few myself it didn’t do much for me.
CV writing –
The CV writing was probably the most helpful workshop of them all, I didn’t know that there were different styles of CV for different jobs. This helped me as I no doubt might be applying for different type of jobs, such as:
- Conservation
- Lab technician
- Zoo jobs
After this workshop, I wrote different styles of CV’s that I could use in the future and update as I need too. At the moment I am just using a simple format as I am only working part time jobs till I finish this academic year.
Dragons den –
Dragons den was my least favourite workshop, I am not interested in making my own business. This is because I am not interested in many things other than reptiles, if I was to start my own ‘pet shop’ it could be difficult to start. For example, owning a reptile business you need to:
- Beat online prices, which is hard
- Stock more unusual animals, as Royal pythons or Leopard geckos are hard to sell as they’re so popular
- Getting better reputation than other reptile shops
- Also how expensive the equipment is to hold the reptiles in the store
Overall I would rather work a 9-5 job and just breed reptiles from home, it would be cheaper. Also most people these days order reptile equipment online and buy animals from breeders as it’s usually cheaper than reptile shops.
What’s the plan now?
As I really don’t know what my plan is for this upcoming year, I just want to get as much experience from different job environments as I can. I may go do more work experience back at Exmoor zoo, it’s a small zoo but I enjoyed my time there. After the year away, I hope to come back to do a masters on Aspidoscelis tree or something similar, as it’s a not an understood group of where each species relates to each other.
I didn’t make many contacts during the time but seeing some of the work people have been doing was amazing and made me really think what I want to do in the future. Research would be a possibility depending if it was on something I enjoy.
Working in a zoo on the reptile department would be something more I would enjoy as I could encourage people to not see reptiles as the monsters people think they are. I have already helped one person with their fear of snakes, and would love to help more people with their fears and shows how harmless they can be.
I’m also going to be breeding different species of reptiles that I own as that will be good experience if I wanted to go into a zoo environment. For example, I’m hopefully going to start breeding Giant Madagascan Hognoses (Leioheterodon madagascariensis), not many people have been able to breed this species and would awesome achievement to be able to successfully breed them.
Herpetology with Emily Reed 