I wanted to start by offering my sincerest thanks to Lord Laidlaw and the Laidlaw programme as a whole. Everyone has been so kind and supportive and it has dramatically changed my university experience.
Firstly full disclosure, when I first applied to the laidlaw program I was mostly motivated by the research project based around evolutionary biology led by the amazing Dr Carolin Kosiol. My academic parents were laidlaw scholars and so I did know good things of it, but I truthfully didn't know what they were until much further into the program. I have been deeply relieved to be proven incorrect on this.
Let's start from the beginning, my initial laidlaw journey was ruled by the spontaneity and chaos which I often like to live my life by, after spending ages reading and writing around my topic, I wrote a report on the scientific potential that I felt was really applicable, and then didn't realise there was a substantial other part to the application (cue me panic submitting just minutes before the deadline with both of my parents on a call trying to dredge useful past examples I could apply). I was then doubting my application for a while - even emailing Dr Kosiol to cut my losses and try to do this project in case I was rejected by the program. Thankfully I made it through to the interview process.
My preparation for this was rudimentary at best, I read through the laidlaw key goals, and tried to think of an answer to the hypothetical question I was told to expect - a who would you save on a desert island. My approach to both was to go for bold and unusual, however a fight with my (ex)girlfriend the night before the interview led me to enter the exam in a state of pure sleep deprivation and caffeine high, thankfully this is actually one of the conditions that I thrive in (and coincidentally am writing in at the moment). Instead of a stable and prepared Murray, the interviews found a chaotic, self-deprecating and people pleasing Murray. Truthfully I think this might have helped, my interview questions were fine, but it was the conditions for the escape room challenge under which I would thrive. Every problem was an opportunity for humour and joviality, every solution an opportunity for me to show team collaborative skills. The other applicants I was with were incredible and I had no idea on who would make it forward, and I was shocked to find out mere hours later that I was through! I remember sat having a strawberry yum-yum in fisher and donaldson as we planned our Race2 route, and suddenly my life would change. I went to the first session knowing (I thought) nobody and being pleased to find out a mutual friend Flavia would be part of the program. The first talk was on how the people were the best part of the program, and truth be told, I was actually quite happy with my current friend group and support network. The second talk was actually conducted by someone who I had been no-contact with for about a year, and wasn’t fully sure how either of us would react (thankfully well). I don’t think I formed any distinct opinions on the program at this time, I was quite happy with my life and was mostly just happy to be having a paid research position for the summer. This changed with the weekend away, for me it was a nightmare logistically, missing 2 big social events, having a deadline the next day, and having to skip lectures to be able to change work shifts for the weekend away. But it was also a brilliant time away, I really enjoyed the analysis of the different personality types and some of the teambuilding activities.
My issue with university has been that I often have not had the opportunity to study topics which interest me.
My first summer project was the first time that I have had the freedom to conduct my own research, and to feel like I did have what it takes to be a researcher. My supervisor was incredible at teaching me the initial aspects to methods for phylogenetic trait measuring, but it was really interesting to see where the research followed me and this ended up being only a minor part of the whole project.
The first summer truly felt like my own research in a way that I have never experienced before, and it felt surreal becoming an expert in a (very niche) subject. Who knew lichen could be so interesting! The social aspects to my laidlaw summer were undoubtedly brilliant, my cohort were so lovely and St Andrews in the summer was a magical experience.
I don't know what led me to be sat next to Alexandra Ermolenko that night, maybe my washing machine was broken? But a conversation about conservation began a butterfly effect that would lead me to the ends of the earth. We knew that we wanted to do some form of biological/ environmental work. For both of us it would act as a good transitionary step between our respective fields and more appliable fieldwork. The exact location was still very up in the air, the issue is that everyone does conservation work, so many programs exist for rich entitled western kids to think they are making a genuine positive difference for a local community, and for a CV boost. It was very hard to find NGOs who's programs were not atleast partly like this.
I initially have had my dream to go to Bhutan for a long time, for the cultural and environmental diversity and niche it would provide, unfortunately while Alex was relatively open to this, visas to one of the least globalised countries were sadly quite difficult to source, and all partner organisations were ghosting us. We had a number of organisations with existing programs that we could easily 'buy' our way onto with little difficulties. However I didn't love this idea and we kept on looking. We eventually found Wayqecha biological station, in the cloud rainforests of the Amazon.
This station had everything we wanted, a good base for us to build projects from, the prospect of very cute animals (paddington bear!), and a seemingly cooperative host organisation.
This organisation had 3 fairly good research stations, personally, I was most excited by wayqecha as a lover of the mountain climate, altitude and the lack of potentially dangerous insects.
We reached out to the director of Los Amigos biological station who handily had only just arrived at the station! And so we would be his first interns, while I truthfully was terrified by this location, I was won over by the science director dan, who as well as growing up minutes away from me, also was saying all of the right things including project leadership and autonomy, which were significant improvements on our SMART goals.
The next few months of planning in coordination did make me more excited, but also more uncertain of what a day to day experience would look like at the station, and realising that while we could plan broad smart goals to achieve, the actual projects would be more likely to be developed quickly once we arrived. To me this was actually okay and I am quite good under these conditions. But it made writing the actual proposals and planning equipment/ logistics slightly harder. Truth be told it took a long time for reality to set in, there were initially difficulties with Alex's involvement in the project, and having never flown before, the concept of just 'teleporting' half way around the world to a project in the AMAZON felt truly out of this world.
I cannot thank celina and the travel office enough for being willing to help me so much and accomodate the murray travel approach which I am fully aware to many people looks insane. This gave me essentially complete flexibility of how I would get there, while my initial route would have circumnavigated the world, unfortunately a ferry connection in Baku was my first hurdle, and managing to get lyme disease prior to leaving left me heavily dependent on western medicine.
So the day arrived, I had to board my first ever plane, thankfully with my wonderful friend Callisto to physically get me through the airport. I was lucky enough to have a window seat and was glued to it as we crossed the beautiful atlantic.
Just a philosophical tangent, global aviation is a tragedy and the fact that it has become so normalised but also monopolised by so much of the world is honestly one of the worst things that have come out of the post war order. The fact that I couldn't get to America by cargo ship/ passenger ship even after trying so hard is a tragedy. That is just environmental, I would argue the biggest issue is social and cultural, it is such a poor and un-mindful form of transit. I was instantly teleported into a whole other world, but without any of the acclimitasition period that would have normally occured for humanity for our whole life as a civilisation. It feels so strange, not denying that globalisation and time-space compression has been been great in some ways for connecting us all, but in many others it makes the whole transition seem so impersonal. Anyway niche tangent over, my layovers were nice! Was lovely to see one of my closest friends in Toronto, and to be able to have a few days in peru beforehand. Lyme was still destroying me at this point so it was a lazy few days but still undeniably interesting experience. Canada was great! I see what people mean about North American Culture, Tim hortons my absolute love, the canadian dollar is an economic tragedy for them, but incredible for me.
So then peru! It turns out that my spanish skills were really not where I was hoping they would have been, theres a big difference between reading and speaking and I should have practiced the latter significantly more than I had, but still I had a good enough grasp to be able to get my way through the airports and into my hostel. When alex had arrived and we had checked into the airport it was quite reassuring but still at this point incredibly surreal. Puerto Maldonado was interesting.
The city was very untouristed, and don't get me wrong that is my favourite kind of experience, but (having never flown before either) means that the most 'foreign and untouristed' location I've been to is probably closer to hitchiking through rural Carpathia, not to somewhere where we were the only white people and non-native spanish speakers.
It also just didn’t make sense, the employment structures were set up for such a circular service economy, while I’m assuming that some money comes in from the workers at the farms and gold mines it just doesn’t seem like it would be enough? This is my only experience in a developing country so far so I was basically just fascinated about logistics and supply chains for much of my time there.
The 4am morning taxi to the port was a very surreal experience, the transport is very informal, and one notable difference to anywhere i had been before is just how hard it is to get into contact with people. I had never considered this to be a significant diference but the apps we use proved to be one of the biggest ones. I am so used to using google maps as my everything, but barely any businesses were showing up, absolutely no public transport was registered. The way to get to the station was through these boats intended for illegal minors to be able to get to their stations.
It's such an ethical grey area and one that I don't have the solutions to. I've read lots on the 'monsters' who are destroying nature, and threatening the worlds climate goals. But these are just people, governed by a free market which is the only way that they can provide a subsistence for their family. Who are we as the west to tell them that we, who have subjugated them to do this very same extractive production, can no longer do it themselves. But undeniably this line of work looks horrific from a personal health perspective and I hope that the working conditions can improve significantly based on what we saw.
Onto the LIA! I will mostly touch on this in my video, but the experience was wonderful, and from a personal level much of what I wanted to achieve.
The first day was the first time in a while I cried to my parents, we had heard so many horror stories that day of various bugs, spiders and diseases that I had no idea what I was in for. I had my mosquito net on at all times for the next few days but am glad that I managed to move past this. I was worried that I would be in a constant grass is always greener state with Wayqecha as a comparison. In hindsight I am so glad to have had the experience and freedom that we had at los amigos, but I would have wished that it was occuring at Wayqecha, but i am acknowledging that it would have looked very different if it was. Otherwise it was great!
I will aim to publish all of my resources here in the coming few weeks and months to centralise everything but what an experience.
General advice to everyone
Favour LIA’s with the greatest freedom
Make the most of your time with your cohort in the first summer!
See if you can find a likeminded scholar to collaborate with for your LIA
Trust in the world and slow travel if you can! Not laidlaw specific but I have found myself happiest with the most faith in humanity when I am doing this.