Scratch That #2: How it started?

One of the many hats that I don is that of an ecologist. That probably means many different things but to put it simply, nature makes me curious and the questions that it poses drive me.

Yup, that's me!

You're probably wondering how I ended up in this situation. It all started when... Oh wait, this isn't Instagram. 

Honestly, I do not know how it all started. I was never an outdoorsy kid. It was only during my undergrad that I first started being outdoors only to end up getting locked back indoors thanks to a global pandemic. It's cruel how you realise the value of something only when you can no longer have it.

The pandemic meant classes were online and professors had become tiny boxes on screens. Learning had come to a halt or so you might think. When you are no longer limited by syllabi and unreasonable expectations of attendance, you get to truly chase your curiosities. Humans are wired to pursue knowledge. It's an evolutionary advantage. It's how we know which berries are poisonous, so we don't die. Someone was curious enough to test and their friend was smart enough to document ;)

Curiosity thrives when you can pause, observe, think, and question, not when you are forced to follow curricula that tells you what to "learn" for the test and allows very little room for critical inquiry. So I paused. I paused that online class. I observed. I observed the birds in my backyard. I wondered why the babblers always came in groups. I wondered why some birds sing while others not so much. I looked for answers sources outside of the prescribed readings. I started learning things that I truly wanted to learn. 

I guess that is how it started. Watch this space to find out how it's been going. COMING SOON-ish

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A post shared by Kezia Kunapareddy (@ke_zi_yeah)

Origin stories can be unreliable. Humans are too complex to have a single origin story that explains who they are. Hence, there is always time to rewrite tomorrow's plot.