BIO
After a childhood spent picking berries and climbing spruce trees in
Fairbanks, I left Alaska to study geology at Washington State
University. When I finished college, I wasn't sure what to specialize in but I was completely sick of basalt. The problem with practicing geology in
eastern Washington is that about 17 million years ago, lava oozed across much of the state, burying all the rocks I
found interesting. Wheat fields cover everything else.
I graduated early and passed the winter training to be a tour bus
driver. The summer of 1995 was spent driving 60-foot buses between
Fairbanks and Whitehorse, Canada, continuing my high school history of
tourism-linked jobs.
Had I known better, I would have never volunteered as a substitute
driver for the department bus once I started graduate school at the
California Institute of Technology. I ripped a small hole in the bus
roof with a tree branch on my one and only trip, but at least I wasn't
the one who got the bus stuck in the middle of Baja.
I loved one of my projects at Caltech -- finding and mapping
Snowball Earth rocks in Death Valley (glacial deposits in one
of the world's hot spots, how cool!) - but I couldn't find a topic
interesting enough for a Ph.D. It took about two years before I
realized I enjoy learning about science, not being a scientist.
Environmental consulting was also a bust -- too boring. I left
the consulting firm in pursuit of what seemed like the ideal job: science
writing. I was right!
With a science writing certificate from UC Santa Cruz under my belt, I was
soon happily ensconced at the Pasadena Star-News, covering my old school,
the Jet Propulsion Laboratory and local hospitals. Much gratitude goes
to my husband Mike for following me to Santa Cruz, then Idaho Falls and
back to Pasadena while he finished a Ph.D. and I found my calling.
Eventually, Mike got a tenure-track offer too good to refuse and we moved to
Chapel Hill, North Carolina.
Contact me: boskin at nasw dot org
