Geologist & Fairy

Future-proof careers

Hi! I’m feeling like we need something light on-the-wing this week, so that’s what you’re getting. Real serious whimsy. Because while this is not the mood I’m in, it’s what I’m in the mood for.

(Apologies that there’s no voice recording this time. Life happened).

Geologist and fairy.

At almost-five, these are my daughter Nora’s twin career aspirations per a recent report from school. They came home on a light-blue cloud with glue residue from when it was decorated in reused candy wrappers that Nora decided she didn’t want on there anymore at the last minute. So it’s a gummy cloud with a single vestigial silvery wisp, Nora’s name written in her scrawl, and the words geologist and fairy written in green marker by her teacher.

When I was little, I said I wanted to be the leading saleswoman for Mary Kay Cosmetics. This is weird and I would have been abysmal at that job. Just imagine me going door to door and subversively encouraging women to ditch the shellac (no offense to make-up wearers – especially as I will not put this outside the realm of possibilities for me as I grow increasingly concerned with what Clara, my nearly-seven year old first born daughter, calls my “cracks”). In my twenties, without a fully formed prefrontal cortex and full of the judgmental convictions of youth, I would have had zero reservation suggesting that make-up is a waste of money and bad for your skin too. A pink Cadillac (the rationale for my professional plans) was never going to be mine. Also I don’t like cars very much. While I know the difference between a make and a model, that’s about as far as my know-how goes.

Geologist and fairy I can get on board with.

If you’re having trouble seeing how these two paths fit together, it’s because you’re not thinking expansively enough. It’s a you problem.

It’s funny – many adults, especially those of us who consider ourselves “educators,” spend lots of time talking about students who are “career ready” or “future ready” or, ironically now that we’re in 2025, have twenty-first century skills. The other day I read something about “twenty-second century skills” and I was overtaken by an involuntary, full-body eye roll. I’m not an asshole (is that how assholes start their sentences?), but I’d say geologist fairy is better than anything I’ve come up with or seen out there.

Nora specifically wants to be a crystal geologist. Which I think is a nice complement to fairy. Feels like she straddles the tech-crazed, social-media influencer myopia of the day (though I do hope you’ll share this post),

with one foot firmly rooted quite literally on the ground in tangible crystals formed in the Archean and Proterozoic Eons some 2.5-4 billion years ago – and another rooted in past-future-now magic that transcends artificial intelligence and virtual reality.

Rocks are just about the most literal thing I can think of. Tangible. Weighty in the hand. I am glad for the palpability of Nora’s dreams.

I can just see her a couple of decades from now at some remote rock outcropping with her little unruly curls bouncing, her brown eyes reflecting the crystal she has just unearthed and cracked open with her rock hammer, pulling up the hand lens that’s dangling on a black piece of cord around her neck. Geologist jewelry.

I never would have made it as a field geologist (I don’t drink coffee — gasp! — and don’t like beer), but Nora – I think she could hold her own already.

It was because of geology that I almost didn’t live to see twenty. Or that’s the dramatic memory I have of it.

I was in an intensive geology seminar at Stanford with a dozen or so other soon-to-be sophomores crammed into a 14-passenger van. Gary, our esteemed professor who was among a cohort of rockhounds who broke away from the “stable-Earthers” in the 1950s and 60s an helped find evidence to substantiate the theory of plate tectonics – namely that there are several massive lithospheric plates that cover the earth and they’ve been cruising around way slower than a sloth (Did you know sloths can actually grow moss on their fur? They are that slow.) and knocking into and pulling apart from one another over the course of a few billion years. These plates and their movements explain why we have mountains where there are mountains and valleys where there are valleys and earthquakes and whatnot. Now widely accepted as scientific fact, plate tectonics is a big freaking deal. Like geology’s theory of evolution.

Anyhow, the way Gary tells it, all humble and down-to-earth, he found some stuff that helped make sense of plate tectonics and “went to lunch on it.”

So there we were, a baker’s dozen almost-sophomores in a van careening south on California’s highway 1 en route to a cool outcropping of conglomerate including many visible samples of serpentinite (a mineral which I believe belongs at the Round Table) when Gary swerved suddenly, driving the van across northbound traffic into a gravel-filled not-pullout on a blind corner.

“Those are some of the finest pillow basalts I’ve seen outside of Hawaii!” Gary exclaimed, his six-and-a-half foot lanky frame already out of the van, his giant hands touching the black stone wall

We 19-year-olds, still buckled in the van, touched our arms and caught our breath.

Nora will be just like this with her crystals. And her iridescent wings will flutter gently, beating faster with each new discovery.

I think the fairy piece will come in handy because she’ll be able to transport herself to field sites without the dangerous drive. And without the carbon footprint. Indeed, I think fairy is an under-examined pathway on the climate solutions circuit. A real future-proof career.

If someone can figure it out, it’s Nora.

In subsequent conversations Nora has added to her career list nanny and police. Nanny for her older sister Clara’s (future) babies (yikes!). Clara and Nora have figured out that Clara will have kids and Nora will be their nanny and live with them. Eric and I will live “3 kilometers away.” While I’ve witnessed some superheroine nannies (you know who you are!), I’ve decided to remain quiet on the subject of policing. Her grandpa worked as a captain for a sheriff’s department, police-adjacent, after all, and I wanted to sell cosmetics. So we’ll just see.

❤️B