On the Fence

I don't like being on the fence. I much prefer knowing what side I am on, how I got there, and where I am going on that side of the fence. But here I sit on the fence, and its giving me the blahs.

There are two sides of paleontology; warm & fuzzy and cold & scaly. The more I work on my masters research the more ensconced I become in the warm & fuzzy camp, but there are things that I know I like about the cold & scaly camp that I get to visit occasionally.

The warm & fuzzy camp is filled with scientists studying mammals, proto-mammals, primates, and the like. It really is a pretty cool place to be. I fit in here pretty well because I love human evolution, and someday would like to do a study that encompasses all the major extinct hominid classes and see what I can figure out. Basically, I want to add my piece to the puzzle. The w&f camp would also be an infinitely easier place to make my career as it is more female friendly than the cold & scaly camp.

But, the cold & scaly camp is just so . . . cool! I adore doing fieldwork and all it entails. On top of that cold & scaly was my first love. When I was 3 or 4 my mind was all made up to be a paleontologist and I loved dinosaurs . . . particularly Ceratopsians. It wasn't until I learned about evolution, when I was 4 or 5, that I became enthralled with hominid evolution. [Yes, I was an incredibly nerdy child. I rented the same movies about paleoanthropology and paleontology from the movie store over, and over, and over, and over agian. By first grade I could explain the carbon-14 dating process.] The problem with the c&s camp is that it is not terribly female friendly, however with the right connections it could be.

So here I am, on the fence between two diametric opposites. And, don't get me wrong, I do enjoy the research I am doing right now (heck, I just got offered an undergrad assistant, what more could I ask for?!) but I am not sure that it is the path I want to follow for the rest of my career.
What I want is to be able to sit on the fence forever, and work in both the warm & fuzzy camp and the cold & scaly camp and even combine data from both sides of the fence and see what we get then.

Hopefully, the more work on my research I do the clearer the path I want to take will become.