fishing for groupers

Jim asked me where I was going next after leaving the lab. No clue, I said. I felt quite lost. I put all my eggs in the grad school basket, and that basket fell apart as all the admission decisions rolled in.

(Colleen: “Good! You need time to grow — away from school.”)

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Jim said he figured I would be lost, even before all the admissions decisions came in. He told a story (as he likes to do) about how he spent a summer in his youth catching grouper gonads.

Jim never said how big the groupers he caught were, but this one is huge. Photo credit: David Doubilet from National Geographic.

Catching fish gonads doesn’t sound like the most glamorous summer job after graduation, but it was what the temp agency offered him. He wasn’t in a position to say no. The task: catch the grouper, tag the grouper, release the grouper. “I got pretty good at it, too.” Other fishers would look on in disbelief when he released them.

He took odd jobs like these long before he became the professor I know him as.

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The larger point he was trying to make: it’s okay to have a long, windy road to wherever you want to go. Compelling careers and fully lived lives don’t have to follow straight lines.

(they rarely do anyway)