Dream Job

I recently had the opportunity to meet Anna Baughman, the young, erudite editor of the "Morrisons Cove Herald." During our conversation I nosily asked her if she liked working at the "Herald."

"Oh, yes," she replied enthusiastically. "I love being the editor of the newspaper. It's my dream job."

I was happy to be writing for someone so excited about her job.

When driving home afterward, I considered my own work experience. I liked my job most of the time. I served as a teacher for 35 years at Bellwood-Antis. I was fortunate to teach there. At Bellwood I was blessed to work with a caring, competent faculty; was lucky to have the support of parents in the community; and was fortunate to work with students who were cooperative and anxious to learn. It was a wonderful work environment.

As I continued to reflect, I wondered what my dream job might have been if I had not become a teacher. My thoughts drifted toward having been a wildlife biologist.

I had entered college thinking I might become a forester. However, I am terrible at higher-level math: The forestry curriculum was filled with challenging math and math-related courses. I was a good reader, and my uncle Bill Rhodes suggested that I might want to major in English (rather than history because jobs for people with history degrees were harder to obtain than English-related ones). So, that's what I did.

Anyhow, if I had chosen to become a wildlife biologist, I might have worked in an outdoor-related field where I could have made differences in how things are managed. Perhaps like the Fish Commission's biologists of the 1980s, I would have advocated for wild trout management in streams where wild trout could flourish if stocking hatchery trout were ended. The biologists who supported this policy would be delighted to find that nearly all of the streams where stocking was ended now support healthy populations of wild trout. Most season-long anglers respect these trout and fish for them on a catch-and-release basis.

Conversely, a wildlife biologist could exert a negative influence on wildlife if he implemented a poor policy. This is pretty much what happened with the establishment of the PGC's deer management policy in the early 2000s that has decimated the public-land deer herd. (Deer on posted properties still thrive.)

If I had not become a teacher, perhaps being a wildlife biologist would have been my dream job. If I had become a biologist, I hope I would have been like the forward-looking fisheries biologists of the 1980s.