Beth Shapiro

It was pretty fun.

And I was convinced that this is what I wanted to do with my career.

I went to the University of Georgia.

They have a fantastic broadcast journalism school.

I started off as the news director at one of the local radio stations.

And this job...

Let's just say wasn't particularly compatible with being a freshman in college.

There was there were mornings when I was locked out of the bathroom, but I had only been asleep for one and a half hours after being out for too late at night doing things that I shouldn't have been doing because I was underage.

Right.

And had to go to work to write the news and then be on this broadcast radio station.

It was terrible.

Anyway, how did I move from there to science?

I took this amazing class.

It's similar to a class that I ended up teaching at UC Santa Cruz recently where it was a field geology and archaeology program.

And we started off on the East Coast.

We learned about rocks and how to identify minerals.

And then we drove across the country and slept outside in national parks and learned about the history of North America, the geological history, the human history, everything, while being there in person.

Drove up the West Coast, drove back around the country.

It was nine weeks.

And I thought to myself while I was there, this is the story that I want to tell.