Follow the Journey

Written By Camille, Latitudes ’19 Belize

I am a horrible decision maker. I have a tendency to over think everything, minute or not, and am a definite worrier by nature. This little factoid about myself, as you might imagine, made picking a latitudes placement one hell of a ride. The moment I signed onto Carpe Diem I started sifting through years of blogs by previous latitudes students and researching the countless organizations that people had participated with in the past. This method, whilst good for fact collection, made my decision making process even harder. The more I researched the more places I added to my list of possible placements, but nothing was hitting me with a gut feeling of “Yes, this is what I want to do.” As the months passed and my list was added to, subtracted from, scribbled out and rewritten a multitude of times, the time was running out for me to make my decision. I was honestly terrified. I was going to spend 3 months in whatever place I chose, and how would I know that I had picked the best place for me out of so many available options? It’s not that I thought u would have a bad time going to wherever I chose, it’s just I wanted to have the best experience possible, but I felt I just wasn’t finding it. Finally, on one of the emails I had sent back to my parents for advice on the matter, my mother said something that finally gave me the final push to pick my placement. “Even a bad experience is a valuable one.” With those words I took a look at my list and made my decision, because no matter what I picked, it would provide in some shape or form something valuable in the end. Funnily enough the placement that I chose was from the first blog that I read while researching for placements, and that was Wildtracks. Also good news, Wildtracks did not turn out to be a bad experience, but a fantastic one. My time here consists of rehabilitating endangered monkeys, and one special manatee named Sandy. While the work is hard the rewards of what we are doing here are well worth it. So in the end the horrible decision maker was able to make a decision, and I could not be happier with the one I made.