Career Advising at EOU

I grew up, literally, with a book in my hand thanks to the influence of my mother, who was a third grade reading teacher, and my father, who was an elementary school principal.  I wore glasses at an early age probably because I used to stick my head out the window and read by moonlight after "lights out".  My favorite place in elementary school was manned by Mrs. Shannon, a  gifted storyteller who transformed words on the pages of books into wonderful tales.  Looking back, it is no surprise that I had read all the books in our elementary school library by the time I finished fifth grade.

My sixth grade teacher, Mr. Shelby Henriquez, asked us to write a letter to the author of a book we had read.  I wrote my letter to Philip Foner, author of Jack London, American Rebel.  Much to my surprise and joy, Mr. Foner replied to my letter and sent me an autographed copy of his book.  Writers obviously were pretty nice people!

High school was a wave of classes.  Physics, geometry, calculus and chemistry were challenging, but my favorite was English.  My senior English teacher was Mr. Armando Henriquez (Shelby's brother), one of the best teachers I have ever had.  He encouraged me to write and the result was a short novel.  When he asked me if he could read part to the class I was very honored and very hooked.  I wanted to be a
writer!

Choosing a college was tough. My father was really upset when I turned down an offer from Dartmouth College, an Ivy League school, but quickly warmed to Bowdoin College, a small school on the coast of Maine.  Bowdoin, the alma mater of Hawthorne and Longfellow, among others, seemed perfect for a future novelist!

Freshman year at Bowdoin was an eye-opener.  When I walked into my dorm room for the first time, my roommate was tacking an American flag on the wall.  He shook my hand and informed me that he was going to be President of the United States someday.  My father, who was a lifelong Republican and future town mayor, loved Ed right from the start.  I was not so sure!  I spent a good deal of time that first year putting Ed's head in a garbage can after he came home from parties at the "in" fraternity so he wouldn't throw up all over the floor.  He partied while I concentrated on sports (cross-country and wrestling) and my schoolwork.  More physics, calculus, Latin and, of course, English.

My freshman classes were challenging.  I liked my Physics teacher, who had a dry sense of humor but got the basics through loud and clear.  I'll never forget the lecture he gave on how geysers worked.  Just as he finished the last equation, a geyser erupted out of a hole in the floor.  He'd worked years to time his lecture just right!  My calculus teacher was brilliant and kept our attention, especially the day he hooked his arm around the post between two floor to ceiling windows and swung himself outside and back into the room through the other window.  We were on the third floor!  My Latin professor was incredible, too.  Just imagine a George Burns look-alike who smoked a cigar in class and told incredibly funny stories with a Maine accent!  He made Caesar and The Satyricon  come alive.

My English class, on the other hand, was something else.  I liked the professor, who invited us over to his house for dinner, a lot, but the textbook was something else.  The Norton Anthology of English Literature was overwhelming, even back in 1970!  When I got my fall semester grades, there were A's in Physics, Calculus and Latin, but my English grade was a C.  I did the worst in the subject I liked best in high school!  Obviously, my career as a writer was in jeopardy!  Spring semester was the same story, so I decided not to take any more English courses.

My sophomore year I decided to take geology because my new roommate was a geology major, the first in Bowdoin's history.  I liked the field trips!  When it came time to pick a major at the end of my sophomore year, I was at a loss.  I liked math and physics, but I wanted to work outside.  Biology, especially ecology and ornithology, were fun, but I don't like blood and so the anatomy courses I'd be required to take were not my cup of tea.  That left, by process of elimination... Geology!

I'll never forget going in to tell Art Hussey, the geology professor at Bowdoin, of my decision.  I was overly shy and had difficulties speaking when I was nervous (a speech therapist once told my parents that my brain and my mouth were out of gear and there was nothing that could be done to fix it), so I barely managed to stammer out that I wanted to be a geology major, the second in Bowdoin's history.  Art Hussey was overjoyed and so was I.  I had finally chosen my major!  He informed me that I would have to double-major since Bowdoin did not yet have a free-standing major, so I decided to combine Geology and Physics.  Alia iacta est ... The decision had been made!

After that, things were smooth sailing.  I liked the small classes (5 people) in the upper division geology classes and loved the field trips, especially the one we took for my Structural Geology class to Quebec's Gaspe' Peninsula in the middle of a raging Northeaster.  One night we stayed at a roadhouse, complete with "ladies" upstairs!  We drove the 15 hours back from the Gaspe' straight through and arrived at Bowdoin at 3 a.m.  The next morning, everyone showed up for class at 8 a.m.!

Geology was for me, but what branch?  I decided to pursue the study of lakes and moved on to graduate school at Wisconsin and from there to Duke University to study coastal and deep-sea processes.  Along the way, I've been on field trips and cruises all over the world, including Alaska, the Mediterranean and the Caribbean and I've met a lot of great people and had a lot of fun.  Going into teaching seemed like the logical way to keep having this kind of fun and, 20 years later, I am still exploring and having fun learning about the land around us with students.

I wonder what my life would have been like if I had become a writer instead of a geologist.  I'm hoping that someday, now that I have learned a little bit about the geology of Oregon and life, to write about it, perhaps starting with a book on the Oregon coast.  I'd need to sharpen my writing skills, to be sure, but they can't be too bad.  I have proof.  A while ago I received the reviews of a scientific paper which I had submitted to the Geological Society of America Bulletin.  One of the reviewers had written "Too well written- he must be hiding something".  Maybe there's still a bit of novelist and storyteller in me yet!