Links to op-eds, book, and science writings
How someone becomes a geophysicist is a mystery to me. It's not exactly something you decide you're going to do when you're a kid. For me and almost everyone else, it's a circuitous journey. Below is a brief summary.
I started out as an opera singer in college, but decided I didn't have the talent to succeed. I was always good at math and thought briefly about going in that direction; a Ph.D. mathematician friend of mine convinced me that was a dead end. Then I turned to comparative literature. However, the culture of the humanities was just way too nasty and snobbish for my taste. I decided to stick to reading fiction as a hobby. I met a geophysics professor by chance. Geophysics seemed like a good way to combine my love of the outdoors with my love of math. And it was.
From about 1979 to about 1997 I was a full tilt science geek. But nothing is constant in life. Money started to dry up for "curiosity-based research" in the mid-1990s. Applied research money was still there, but I've always found that kind of research boring. The quality of undergraduate education degraded significantly nationwide as colleges increasingly viewed students as "consumers." Teaching is often more about babysitting and joke telling than it is about education. I like to tell jokes. Babysitting 21 year olds is another story. I had a working body and brain fully capable of doing something new. I moved back to my home in California in 2001 and started fresh.
Above you'll find links to op-eds, books, and (through my CV) science papers. I still write about higher education in my blog, Forty Questions, but gradually I'm leaving that kind of writing behind. I still put on my science hat and consult on water issues.