A friend of mine once told me that, statistically, you’re more likely to grow up to do your childhood dream job than anything else. I don’t doubt her. I know artists and blacksmiths, jewelry makers and authors, people making a living on crafts you would expect from a bustling European village circa 1765. For my part, I wanted to be a paleontologist before I could walk.
My parents joke that my first word was “Parasaurolophus”, supplied me with encyclopedias and dinosaur books galore. When they ran out of books at my age level, they bought me high school and then college textbooks for Christmas. When I went to school, I went with paleontology in mind and proceeded to work in the Earth Science collections for the next three years. This isn’t even counting the volunteer hours I put in at nearby museums, the internships and long hours in the sun excavating dinosaur bones, the longer hours at the microscope looking for microfossils.
And it’s not like the dream is dead, either. Just the other day, I got my hands on a textbook on parasitism in the fossil record. I’ve been reading through it during slow periods at work and, somehow, this topic still has me in a death grip.
I’ll let you know when I death-drop back into the industry.
from the pen of icarus blake 
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