Chironomids: A Personal Journey

The year was 1977. I was an undergraduate student at the newly created Biology Department at the Simon Bolivar University in Venezuela. We were a group of about 30 students, mostly transfers from other careers (I had been in Engineering for 3 years when I transferred to Biology), who had waited patiently for the bureaucratic process of creating a new department in our university. A team of new faculty members, some very well known scientists, some barely older than we were, worked with the students to create the new curriculum, outfit the laboratories, and develop research projects where the students could participate as research assistants. It was a wonderful time filled with creativity, endless energy, hard work, and fantastic scholarship and idealism. Some of us students drifted from lab to lab, learning techniques, going on field trips with our professors, and learning the ropes of this new career we had chosen: to be a professional biologist.