
The Life of a Lichenologist - objections
http://www.theatlantic.com/science/archive/2016/05/life-of-a-lichenologist/482157/
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Alex3917
Although I find lichenology to be kind of boring, the fieldguides for it are
outrageously good. Unlike with mushroom books, the lichens in the pictures
pretty much always look exactly like the ones in real life. And since lichens
are much easier to photograph, the photos tend to be much much better also.

There's also a really easy onramp into the hobby. Because in most cities there
are only a handful of species due to their pollution sensitivity, you can
pretty much figure out what they all are just by guess and check. And then
once you learn the basics, you can start going out into the suburbs. There is
a good list of all the species in NYC here:
[http://lichens.nyc/](http://lichens.nyc/)

It also doesn't matter what season it is, whether or not it's recently rained,
etc. And given that roughly 100% of trees have lichens on them, if you can
find a tree then you've probably found enough stuff to spend an afternoon
looking at.

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tomkat0789
Sometimes I dream of leaving engineering to research plants or rocks. I don't
think I'd like being university professor with all the responsibilities that
entails, but it's nice to imagine exploring the wilderness, looking at each
rock and tree for what you might find. Something I think about while coding in
a windowless office.

~~~
cwal37
I've been (and am) there. My undergrad was at least half ecology with plenty
of field work (in the states and briefly in Africa), and one of my graduate
degrees was also in environmental science, but somehow here I am in a
windowless concrete cube for the last 2.5 years writing code and building
models. When I was finishing undergrad I was looking at park ranger type jobs,
but it turned out that with a couple of wars on those jobs were almost
impossible to get for someone who wasn't preference eligible. I could have
gone to grad school more explicitly for fieldwork-related disciplines, but I
wanted to focus on getting a solid set of technical and policy skills, which
ended up with me in an office in the south, driving everywhere and getting
fat.

After about a year of that I really buckled down and focusing a lot more free
time on exploring the outdoors and the ecological and geological systems I
enjoyed in undergrad. I end up spending a lot of time outside: hiking,
camping, backpacking, even just relaxing in a hammock, and exploring the
natural processes I know as best I can in a somewhat-informed sense (Why is
that gullying? What's that on this tree? Was this burn prescribed or
accidental? How old is this rock? What is this rock? How hard is this rock?).

Basically, you never know what path you're gonna go down, but it's not the end
for you to pursue physical, hands-on knowledge on your own, you just won't get
paid to do it. The motivation can be often hard to come by, but when I'm out
there and get to take a nap on top of a mountain, clamber up onto a boulder
mid-river, or get that perfect picture of a bee pollinating some wild flowers
I feel quite at peace, even if the rest of my week is in that windowless
concrete cube.

~~~
Symbiote
I'd like to learn about what lives around me, but having recently emigrated I
can't yet read the local field guides!

I plan to find an amateur ecologist group and join in. Perhaps using something
like iNaturalist [1] where observations can be recorded, and other people will
verify (or dispute) the identification. Good observations become "research
grade", and are shared for research.

[1] [http://www.inaturalist.org/](http://www.inaturalist.org/)

