A friend of mine has a dilemma.
She's been temping next door with the JGI for six months, waiting for a job to come along in Africa. Last month, it turned up and three days ago she was offered a position in the Field Study Centre at Gombe doing some anthropological research with chimps. Fantastic opportunity. Crap money and all that, but she cares as little as I would when it is something you have always wanted to do.
The yesterday she gets a telephone call from a professor at Cambridge and personal friend (of hers, of Jane herself, and a professional acquaintance of Dr. Lewis Leaky) offering an opportunity to start a pHD at the university in January. All the above named and others involved have been telling her for years that she needs this PHD, and she told me earlier that she missed an opportunity in Kenya a year or so ago because she didn't have it.
All the signs point to taking the PHD course. What better qualification is there?
But, being an American citizen in the UK she has to apply for funding from the States and that a) takes ages and b) is expensive and c) 40,000 people apply for the same grants each year. Doctors, vets, scientists etc have spent the rest of their lives in massive debt trying to pay back similar loans and fees.
And the job is a great challenge,a real "foot in the door" kind of position for someone with ambitions to run a similar sanctuary one day
Don't know if I have been much use (but the wine and cake were good!) and she's gone away so confused. Jane is out of the country until Sunday - I hope they can talk about it when she gets home. In her eyes of course there is no dilemma - Cambridge is the obvious thing to do and let the consequences sort themselves out. That's what I said.
Faith does tend to simplify this kind of situation, but it must be a really difficult decision to make. I would go for leaving JGI in January, but deferring entry to Cambridge until October (which is a perfectly possible option). Then spend the intervening eight months at home earning as much money as she can and looking for other funding.
But what do I know...