I love my job but its not my end game by any means. I've worked in the pet industry for as long as I've been able to work (was volunteering before that) and am currently employed at one of my areas LFS and love helping people find success in the hobby. I know it brings others the same joy and relief it brings me and I think its awesome I get to share that with people and just talk to people who are passionate about animals!
Since grade 2 my goal in life was to be a herpetologist and I really thought I could make it as one. My colleagues and regular customers call me an encyclopedia and its quite deserved, I spent most of my childhood researching various animals, reading every book I could get my hand on and participating on forums like this one for whatever group of organism's I was enthralled with at the time. Latin names and information on different species gets stuck in my head often after only seeing it once and I can recall that information nearly indefinitely.
However as impressive as my mind seems to be in that way its is proportionately dumb in math. As hard as it was I grinded through every math I had to take in school because I knew it would be worth it in the end. Pre call 11-12 was where I started to really struggle. Even in the most supportive environment you can imagine I could barely keep up. A lot of those classes ended with me in tears just from the amount of mental strain I was going through trying to understand the concepts. I eventually passed but once I got to Uni I realized if I continued down this path my mental health would deteriorate to unsafe levels.
It sucks because a few years ago I went to Thailand to do some volunteer work with Asian Elephant conservation and I blew everyone there away. They had never seen someone so driven to learn and explore. I was only there for two months but in that time I made such an impression that I became the first volunteer to ever receive an award for my contributions to the project and a letter of recommendation. From that experience alone I know I have what it takes to do the work and make a difference in conservation. It just really sucks I'll never have the mental capacity to get through the academics I need to (at least in North America) actually become a true Herpetologist.
