Cómo llegué a mi profesión - How I got into my profession | Steem Sri Lanka 3G Contest Series | Week 09.

The contest is extremely interesting, in part, because we all have a life trajectory in which a permanent search stands out with a view to achieving objectives that we have set for ourselves, although I think that when the objectives are achieved, new objectives always arise; that is to say, the search never ends.

Since I was a child I have always been an observer of nature in all its aspects and I noticed that everything was harmonious. The only thing I could not reconcile in its harmony was what we humans consume as food. For example, a lion is adapted with canines and claws to kill an antelope, and the antelope is adapted with longer ears that move in all directions to sense when it is approaching and longer legs suitable for running and escaping from the lion, likewise, the antelope's teeth are adapted for tearing and chewing grass. I thought, we humans are not adapted to chase an animal, tear off its skin and eat its raw meat, what we do is to raise it to sell it and then buy it in some commercial establishment and then at home improve its flavor by adding seasonings and cooking it.

With this example, among other concerns related to the harmony between humans and nature, I spent most of my adolescence. When I graduated with a Bachelor of Science degree I looked through the book of university careers, none of them caught my attention and I chose not to study but to work in any field, however I continued to investigate on my own about food concerns. Five years later I came across a career book again, looked through it and found a new career that had been opened. Reading the career description I said to myself, this is what I am going to study, this career will help me find the truth in what I am looking for.

I graduated as a Food Engineer. The formal study gave me a lot in areas of chemistry. I found many answers but also many new questions. In another sense, I fully identified with a structured course in college, Research Methodology; that course marked me, perhaps partly because my personality is perfectionist, to which I add my symmetry mania.

As a graduate I worked in an animal feed processing industry. Working there helped me in my search. After a while I decided to quit and go back to study a newly opened career that I had learned about when I was an undergraduate, Master in Food Biotechnology. It is curious that when I studied as an undergraduate, the courses with which I felt less identified were those related to enzymes, but in that graduate program practically everything was about enzymes, and in the end I learned what I had not learned very well in undergraduate.

For my Master's Thesis, I asked the university where I did my undergraduate studies to allow me to do the experimental tests in a laboratory and everything was approved. After finishing my thesis I chose to transform it into a research article to publish it in a scientific journal, it was very easy for me to feel identified with the research methodology and I published it.

I graduated from Magister Scientiarum in Food Biotechnology and at the university where I did my undergraduate studies I was hired as a researcher in the laboratory. In that laboratory I conducted several researches. In the process of publishing some of the research in scientific journals I learned how they evaluated what I sent to be reviewed and at some point I thought I had the ability to evaluate the research of others. In that sense, I decided to quit the laboratory and focus on creating an online scientific journal. For that I had to study web design and graphic design.

While I was studying web and graphic design, I completed the publication processes of pending research and new research that I conducted on my own without the need of a laboratory, related to graphic design and food; all of them were published. Curiously, for some reason, research from scientific journals started to arrive to my email for me to evaluate, this was very useful because that was where I was directing my efforts. One of the journals asked me to join their Editorial Board in a formal way and I accepted.

One day I decided I was ready to start the creation of the academic-scientific journal, with a credit card I bought a web domain and hosting on a server. I reviewed resumes online and invited researchers from many countries, on the one hand to submit their work for evaluation with a view to publishing in the first issue and on the other hand to join the Editorial Board. I registered a private Civil Association, which would be the legal entity, prepared the internal regulations and the authors' guide, among others. I created the website, the journal's logo and all the necessary graphic design. At the same time, I began to exercise the editorial functions. From the day I started the creation until the publication of the first issue, six months went by. The work was intense.

For seven years I held the editorial functions in the journal, managing to publish 108 researches from several countries and having the journal indexed in the best academic-scientific journal evaluation databases. Unfortunately I had to suspend the reception of papers due to the dire economy of the country, I also lost the web domain and everything published was moved to a free Google website. I have not closed the journal, I just keep it on hold, it has been on hold for more than three years now.

In that wait I organized a lot of thoughts in relation to the search for answers about human nutrition, thoughts that accompanied me for more than thirty years. After organizing them in a direction I devoted myself to find scientific literature to write and publish a book. The reality is that I got many answers, which, although they are encompassed in a rather complex conclusion, I am satisfied.

I think the learning process never ends, because one learning leads you to another process to learn. I am currently writing a book on vitamins, in the future I hope to start organizing a material that I have, which is not about food, but about an insect that I followed up, to then write and submit for evaluation in a scientific journal.

Finally, to complement, many people in some way collaborate for the achievement of other people's objectives and they are not necessarily people you know. When one reads a book, in reality what one is reading is in large part the thinking of the writer. Having read books by philosopher Jiddu Krishnamurti helped me find strategies to cope with my perfectionist personality and having read the scientific literature of anthropologist Katharine Milton helped me to clarify and reconcile many thoughts while writing the book.

To read the announcement of the interesting contest in favor of the Steem Sri Lanka Community, promoted by @alejos7ven, and which refers to How I got into my profession?, click here. I invite @amestyj, @carlos84 and @rbalzan79.

The images are personal files.