Welcome to the dark side

For the readers that have never heard of the EPA, I don’t blame you it’s a real joke! (not in all countries but certainly in my country and trust me it’s not a poor country), like most government paying jobs it’s a slow growing organization (wait that’s an understatement , let’s face it it’s not slow it’s simply dead), I mean come on when you get a report from the countries institution for scientific studies ( which they funded a European country a lot of money to come and do), [I know this for a fact because I have attended the presentation], show that even if we virtually stop all polluting activities from factories shutting down to simply lettering on an individual scale (be it a cigarette bud or a candy wrapper), the country environment will keep suffering, spiraling down for the next 50 years!

Well if that’s not eye popping then let me tell you a story from my personal experience, well I graduated university with a degree in microbiology as my major and English literature as my minor, I even got a diploma of higher education (in microbiology). Most of my work in microbiology was specialized in mycology (dealing with Fungi), I have written many papers and preformed various experiments all the way to genetic analysis to reinforce many of my findings, but enough of the technical talk and back to the story: as I was saying, the next step in my career was to find a job, get some OJT (On Job Training), then find a good project to use when I apply for my PhD. This would be the goal of any scientist that is passionate about his/her work, so I applied for a job, young and egger full of energy I wanted a chance to show what I’m made of, mentally preparing for all the I would face, how to prove my worth, I even when out and got the latest books and research papers offered in my field of expertise, needless to say I made sure I had everything I needed to always be in tip top of shape.

In a country like my country, you don’t just go and apply for a government job directly you go throw what they call the system! Yup it’s a system that you register in and based on the government sectors that need someone like you, you are drafted to that sector. Sounds good? Yah but does it work? That’s the million dollar question, well let’s say I had 3 choices: - A) Ministry of health B) Ministry of education (as a high school teacher) or C) the EPA. Now naturally for an environmental scientist the obvious choice will be the EPA, so now I was prepared to take my place in the scientific community, go out there see for myself , take samples , analyst them in the lab come up with conclusions to solve environmental problems , make environment friendly suggestions for saving the environment, collaborate with other scientific minds , work as a team, with the group of the elite, be inspired and hopefully find a topic important enough to per sue a PhD in and come back to lead my country forward a step in environmental studies. Ok we all know what happened next , unfortunately this was not the case, I got the job , got drafted to he living resources department, where they stuck me in a zoology lab , looking at stuff I have never seen before or know anything about ! well you can imagine my disappointment, it was degrading, it made me feel like I have wasted all this years of a academic achievement, because I don’t get to use any of the knowledge I have obtained all the way to this point in anything, it was a totally different filed, with no one qualified to train me to do this job , you understand how I must feel ( ok I don’t mean to brag but don’t you think it’s a bit stupid to just put people where you need man power instead of expertise),I tried talking to the boss, but that didn’t work out to good , it was a dead end, I was stuck , yah pretty much, so I took a look all around me, to see this scientific community and how it functions…. Well let me call it as I see it, we are sopuse to be at work at 8:00am , some people show up at 9:30am , the daily ritual seems to be :-

1-      Read the paper and have a cup of coffee.

2-      Order breakfast from any restaurant.

3-      Stopover other coworkers to exchange gossip while waiting for the food to arrive.

4-      Eat on the lab bench and plot and spread rumors about other co-workers, discriminating them based on race and religious beliefs.

5-      Take a quick look at some samples (not more than 3-5 min each) and make a general assessment of No. and types that you’re seeing and chart it down ( it don’t matter if your right or wrong, no one has the scientific background or the decency to check if it’s right or wrong so what the hell).

6-      Look busy when the boss passes by  if he/she passes by mistake , and it’s probably because she/he lost his or her way and ventured towards the laboratories, then leave (we are suppose to leave at 1:45pm but some people leave at 12:00pm).

For honesties sake not all of them are that bad there are 2 other people that actually leave when they are suppose to.

When I talked to the boss about me not being the right person to do this particular job, I found out from aware meeting that for the past 3 years she/he was completely oblivious of what people do in the lab!

So not to keep going on about it, this is the reality of the EPA in some countries, unfortunately countries like my country.