Things I’ve Wanted to Do or Be Over the Years
- Artist (always)
- Writer: fiction, poetry, and essays
- Travel / nature photographer
- High school art teacher, traveling to a new country each summer
- Actor / playwright
- Neuroscientist, specializing in movement disorders and / or the nutritional / metabolic links in Alzheimer’s disease
- PhD in art history, writing about gardens, architecture, and depictions of nature in art
- Art conservator / Art conservation scientist
- PhD in macromolecular chemistry (polymers) and materials science, work in eco-chemistry, improving the efficacy of green cleaning products and the biodegradability of detergents and plastics
- Textile designer / Fashion designer
- Singer-songwriter / electronic musician
And if you’re curious about the approximate chronology…
Main Academic and Career Pursuits So Far
- First undergraduate major: Neuroscience
- Switched to second undergraduate major: Studio Arts, with a minor in Literature and Psychology
- Taught high school classes in drawing and poetry while I was in college, decided I did not want to be a teacher
- First master’s degree: MFA in Painting
- Added second master’s degree: MS in the Theory, Criticism, and History of Art, Design, and Architecture
- While studying materials, techniques & conservation of art in Venice, decided I wanted to be an art conservator, started working in a chemistry lab
- Decided I wanted to be an art conservation scientist
- Started taking chemistry classes for art conservation school and decided I wanted to be a chemist – matriculated in a BS in Chemistry and planned to pay off student loans by working several years in industry doing quality control and product development
- Had to leave school one year shy of my second bachelor’s after accruing lifetime aggregate limit of student loan debt
- Current job (not on the above list, but I like it and feel lucky to have it)
I’m not sure I really have a point, except that life has a way of turning out completely differently than one plans. This is the first time in my life that I have absolutely no idea what the future holds, and I am not actively pursuing anything else.
Maybe I should work on my banjo playing.
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