by Carly Boies

“Carly, please sit.” I had knocked gently on my advisor, Mark’s, office door and waited as
he turned and crossed his slippered feet comfortably in front of him. “What can I do for you?”

“I had some questions about graduate work.”

“Ah.” Mark smiled. “Well that was a long time ago for me.”

I pulled out the chair across from him, fiddling nervously at the hem of my flannel. “I want to know what your PhD was like.”

He raised his eyebrows. “I remember you telling me last year you weren’t interested in
further school.” He smirked. “If I recall, you said you ‘couldn’t be dragged back.’”

“Well, that was last year,” I said defensively.

“I’m glad to hear it. What changed?”

I shrugged. “I wasn’t happy. But I’ve figured some things out, and this year has been better.” I did not elaborate. Mark seemed satisfied and launched into an explanation of lab positions and funding and the application process.

“You know,” he said as I got up to leave, “It is not uncommon for our students to struggle
to adapt to college. Many of them become excellent biologists.” I nodded and thanked him. All
of the next week, I thought about how much it would have meant to hear what he said the year prior.

…

A few months before, I had left my college to study for a trimester at the tip of Argentina, the end of the world. I met the puma man part way through my time in Ushuaia at a coffee shop in town. He was my new advisor, I had been told, and for the rest of my program I was to work on his PhD research. I had not been provided a photo or any identifiable characteristics for this man, only the name Ian Barbe, so I walked up the steps of the quaint store front intent on loitering and identifying the individual who looked the most like a scientist. Fortunately, Ian had all of the predators and mesopredators of the Andean steppe inked up his right arm. It made finding him easy.

“Carly? Bienvenido.” He stood when I walked over and bent down to kiss my cheek. The
tattoos were not his only identifiable characteristic. He was lanky, blonde, and partially obscured by a reddish beard. It was unusual in Ushuaia. “English or Spanish, which do you prefer?” he asked, his accent heavy.

“Los dos,” I replied, sitting across from him. He pushed a plate of the popular, tasteless
ham and cheese sandwiches towards me. I declined and, despite his appearance, decided he was
in fact as Argentinian as they come. He asked about my program and my impressions of Ushuaia,
and I tried to answer in as much Spanish as I could manage.

“You are in school?” Ian asked eventually, crossing long legs awkwardly under the table.

“Si, para la biología.” I explained my previous class work, my experience with R script,
my research projects. Anything I could think of to sound legit and not like a subpar student with
minimal background experience and a rapidly dwindling GPA.

Ian waited patiently for me to finish, polishing off a sandwich while I talked. “Good. I will teach you digiKam for tagging,” was all he responded. I nodded, unsure what he meant. “Y de donde estas, en los Estados Unidos?”

“Minnesota. Centro Norte.”

“Ah, very far,” he remarked. I nodded. It was so different in Argentina, making the distance from home feel enormous. My classes were easier, boring even. I had the space to think about my past two years in which I had committed to and then almost failed out of my college’s biology track. I wanted to research predator ecology, so many years ago it felt like another lifetime. If my success in school was any indicator, I was not cut out for it. I had not thought much about careers or plans or responsibilities since flying to the southern hemisphere.

Then, near the end of my trimester abroad I had been given a catalogue of final projects to choose from. I flipped through it and found a study on the ecology of the Patagonia puma population. Here it was, the kind of project I could spend the rest of my life on, dropped in my lap. I signed up immediately, ignoring the old excitement which began to bubble into motivation. It was probably too good to be true.

Our meeting at the coffee shop ended up lasting three hours. Ian came prepped with slides previously used for funding pitches and photos from his field work. “There are two options,” he
explained. “Either the feces, or the camaras trampas, um, trap camaras.”

“Camaras trampas, I suppose.” It sounded more interesting, less contaminated.

Ian nodded. “Bueno. I will have you start with photos of 2022. Aqui, tengo un disco.” He
pushed a flash drive across the table.

“2022?” I asked hesitantly. It was 2025.

“Si. I have many photos. Too many,” Ian explained. “I am behind, but it’s ok. It’s ok.” He paused for a moment, staring at his screen as he clicked through folders, and then refocused.

Ian showed me how to download the tagging program, upload files from the flashdrive, check that my work was being saved. “This is good for you?” he asked after I ran out of questions.

“Yeah, great. I’ll work on this, probably be done in a week?” I had counted the number of folders in the drive and made a rough estimate.

Ian nodded, smiling. “There are many photos there. Just message me when you finish.”

We exchanged WhatsApps. “If you have any questions, just message,” Ian said, saving his profile.

“Bueno, muchas gracias.” I stood to leave. My whole way home, the flash drive weighed heavy in my pocket.

…

I quickly discovered just how behind Ian was. His camaras trampas were located in four

regions of Patagonia. Each area had at least ten cameras which were motion triggered and busily

photographing half a decade of wind blown sticks, numerous rabbits, and endless herds of sheep.

Puma sightings were rare, maybe two or three in each region each year. All of the photos had to

be processed by hand, clicked through and tagged for species presence. Ian had yet to finish a full

year of his data set. There were holes everywhere, cameras tagged from 2023 but not 2022 or

2021, whole national parks incomplete, and a number of folders in which pictures of pumas had

been labeled but nothing else. His thesis was due in four months.

At our meeting the next week, I handed over my flashdrive. Ian stared at the disk in his hand, looking surprised as I asked for more photos. “How are you finding the tagging?” he asked.

“I’m loving it,” I admitted. It was true, I found the project deeply satisfying.

“Okay, that’s good, that’s good.” He nodded to himself. “I will upload more, but it will take time. You must have spent all your time tagging this week, no?” I nodded. He pushed a new plate of ham sandwiches towards me and sat.

“No, gracias. ” I watched him click through folders and reference a leather bound notebook full of scribbled, illegible dates and lists. He pushed his thick black glasses up his nose, leaning close to his computer screen.

“How long is a PhD, in Argentina?” I asked after a minute.

“The same as the US,” he said, looking up from the screen. “Five or six years. Mine will be five, hopefully.”

I doubted it, privately. “Do you get tired of them?” I nodded towards his computer.

“Los pumas?” Ian flashed me a manic grin. “No, me encantan los pumas.” I watched him flip through my work, selecting specifically for the eight puma photos I had tagged. I had been thrilled when I found them, likely multiple snapshots of one individual who spent a few days near a camera during the winter of 2022.“ Very good. Excellente. This will be good,” Ian remarked when he was done. I smiled, felt the pride rise in my chest.

…

I called my sister two weeks later. “Hey,” I said when she picked up.“ I needed a break from tagging.”

“You’re still doing that?” Brynn asked, surprised.

“Oh yeah.” I had worked my way through two years of footage. I’ve started watching movies while I label. I’m getting faster, better at identifying stuff.”

“Huh,” Brynn said. “Boring.”

“I don’t think so. It’s really cool. I like that it’s real science, not like in school. And I like being good at something.”

Brynn giggled. “You always hated school.”

“That’s not true!”

I could hear her grinning on the other side of the phone. “Yes, it is. How’s your advisor person?”

other things.

“Ian? Weird. But also awesome, he’s obsessed with pumas, it’s great.”

“Sound’s like you’re the one obsessed with pumas.” I did not respond, and we talked of other things.

…

Ian and I were once again at the coffee shop, looking at photos. I had begun dreaming of them, huge cats stalking through my sleeping mind. “Your tag here,” Ian said, pulling my attention back. “It is wrong. You have zorro, that is gato montés. Geoffroy’s cat, es el nombre común en Inglés.” I nodded, leaning over to switch the label. He was checking my work.

“Did you teach yourself the program for tagging?” I asked as he clicked rapidly through photos.

Ian shrugged, eyes on his computer screen. “Yes, but it is easy. R is more difficult. It is these types of things you will learn for a PhD, so it’s okay. It’s okay.”

“How did you start?”

“My PhD?” I nodded and he shrugged, pulling mindlessly at his beard. “I just applied. And then I learn as I go.”

I hesitated. “And if your transcript isn’t so good? Like your grades?”

Ian looked up at me, pausing in his inspection of his work. “It does not matter so much. School is school,” he said sincerely. “Only some people have a fire in them for science. This is more important.” He went back to my photos.“ If you want something enough, Carly, it will happen for you. You have the fire. Ah, mira! Un puma.” I leaned over to check his screen and was met with yellow, piercing cat’s eyes staring back.

We finished our data analysis a week before I flew home to the US. It was a hellish and fiddly process, I learned, trying to compress thousands of lines of excel sheet into a single graph. We made it work, but barely. My results were significant. I was thrilled.

“I just am wanting you to see the process,” Ian said after six frustrating hours. “It needs

patience, you see.”

I nodded, tired. “Your full data analysis must be much worse.”

He smiled. “It will be tricky. I have not started, but my tests were good. The photos must be done first.”

I took a deep breath.

“Ian. Do you want help with that after I leave? You still have so many files to go through and I could tag in the US. I know the system, you would just have to send me camera data.” The words came out in a rush.

He looked up from his computer. “That may be good,” he said slowly. “We could share a google drive, yes. Let me think, but that could be good.” He sat back in his chair a moment. “If you tag for me, you will do your own research. Later, and you must present it in a formal capacity.”

“My-my own research?” I was shocked.

“Yes. You have done great work with my data set, so I will help you with your studies. It is good for both of us.”

I nodded, stunned. “I would love that,” I said quietly.

…

In Mark’s office, many months later, I was almost out the door when he called me back. “I never asked, what do you think you would want to study?” he asked me.

“Predator biology.” I hesitated. “It’s what I’ve always wanted to do.”

Mark looked surprised.

“You never mentioned that before. I had no idea.”

I smiled. “Yeah. I wasn’t sure it was an option for me, for a while. But now I am.” In my mind, my pumas stared at me from the screen of my computer. Their eyes burned yellow, waiting.