When I Grow Up, I Want To Be A...

How did you decide to become a geologist?


As a kid, I knew I wanted to be a scientist: at least part of the time i did, there were times when i wanted to be something else, of course. I think when i was 11 or 12 I wrote my own future obituary in which I was a Nobel-winning biochemist who discovered a cure for cancer (before retiring to become Cheif Justice of the Supreme Court.)

Over my High school years, I vascilated between different sciences. I am aware of phases where i wanted to be a zoologist and specialize in rainforest fauna, a molecular biologist who would create artificial life forms (which I had no intention of forming into an army and taking over the world so stop projecting your own creepy little domination fantasies onto me), and an oceanographer who would fearlessly explore the deep sea-depths. I also thought about anthropology and archaeology. I don't think I ever really thought about geology per se, since i did not know any geologists and had little exposure to it. (earth science was not required in high school so I didn't give it much thought.) I did however, think abou becoming a Vulcanologist: That looked pretty cool.
My devotion to hard science was not unwavering. I also thought about being a writer, a diplomat, or a CIA or FBI agent. Diplomacy has never been my strong suit so I don't know what I was thinking about that one. Traveling the world was always a big plus though.

When I was 17 or 18, I decided to put all life decisions on hold until after my mission. (Three years after said mission, most of those decisions are still on hold.) When the time came to make a decision, I breifly even considered turning to the dark side (i.e. buisiness or pre-law, strictly for the money.) I realized that that would never make me happy, so I thought about it for a while. My thought process was somethign like this:

There are way more people who want to become archaeologists and anthropologists than there are jobs for them.
Ditto for writers, only worse.
Physics: They seem to spend entirely too much time doing math that involves integrals and wierd greek letters that I don't even know what mean.
Chemistry: I don't want to wear a smock and make tiny measurements into test tubes.
Biology: as much as i want to engineer an artificial life form, I really don't care to much for cutting up dead things.
Hey, Volcanoes are still cool! come to think of it, so are the oceans. And i love travel and the outdoors. I'll see what earth science has to offer and if there are career opportunites in it...

So i took Dr. Morris' geology 101 class. And it rocked.

And the rest is history. Not exciting history: history that no one wants to read and I don't want to write about.