I received my Bachelor’s in Bioresource Sciences in June 1982. It took the usual 4 years to complete, split between two universities. Moving from UCLA to Berkeley in my 3rd year saved my academic ship, but my sails were small. I went to university without really knowing why – it was the path of least resistance. Although not disliking classrooms, I wanted to keep in touch with friends, hang out with smart people, feed my love for music, and just have fun. Most university students seemed like me. Able but adrift.
This multi-part essay is about life’s junctures. We all have them, but often overlook them – and with good reason: the effects of what prove to be major decisions can take years if not decades to materialize. Sometimes the implications emerge gradually, others an epiphany comes years later, and yet others, the pivotal events are complex or muddled, shrouding the connections.
What occurred to me in writing Part 1 is the subtlety of so-called predictability. My counselor’s office experience was a clear bifurcation, responsible for many now-predictable downstream effects. But even though that event had to occur for me to then take Entomology 101, my subsequent focus on entomology was primed by my engrossment with creepy crawly things as a kid. Had I not always been fascinated by insects, the shift to the College of Natural Resources (CNR) may have guided me into Conservation Ecology, another class and subject I enjoyed (taught by the amazing Arnold Schultz)[1].
This is a good place for a disclaimer. Throughout this series I will try to pin-point pivotal choices and experiences in my life, but I know that these are simplified signposts of a largely hidden world of causation. In a world of single factor causation, each and everything I’ve done since leaving the counselor’s office could be attributed at least to some extent to my shift to CNR[2]. Had I not made the change to CNR, many of the basic events in my life would have happened anyway, albeit, not identically so. Indeed, had I stayed in Life Sciences and fulfilled the foreign language requirement, other impossible-to-know events would have occurred that would be attributed to not making the flip to CNR.
Staying with this causal thread, when now I think about it, although the counselor’s office in 1980 and entering CNR influenced or determined many aspects of my life, it turns out that a decision I made in high school three years prior also presaged where I am now.
Born to plan
I like to focus on a thing until it’s done[3]. Dedication – sometimes bordering on obsession – is the force enabling days, weeks or even months of binging on a project. Most scientists I know have this quality that can at times become a liability. Focus issues can range from lowering professional standards to sacrificing aspects of one’s personal life.
I didn’t know these risks in high school and given the opportunity, decided it would be nice to focus on college before ever entering one and, in so doing, finish university in 3 years rather than the usual 4. I learned in my junior year of high school that I could get college credit though advanced placement tests and by the time I graduated in 1978 had accumulated one full year of credit this way. But upon entering UCLA and quickly struggling in the first quarter[4], I had to make an important decision: Either I could continue on the 3-year plan and likely not make it into medical school (my objective at the time), or do ¼ less coursework each term and complete the degree in the regular 4 and keep the medical option open. I wisely decided to lighten my load starting in the second quarter in my freshman year. So, my original intention in high school got flip-flopped from faster-than-usual to slower-than-usual education. This creation of free time meant I could both better focus on courses and do things other than study. Other things took many forms one of which was road trips. But like the move to CNR, the road trip bug was completely unexpected.
Finals fugue
I pride my spontaneity. A witty line nudges conversation and gets laughs. But pride does not equal ability and anyone who knows me also knows my blurts can go a bit south. On a night in December 1981, one week before final exams, my spontaneity elicited what can only be described as collective stupidity.
In my senior year at Berkeley I shared a house with three friends met in the dormitory the previous year. Group living with friends is not a recipe for hard work, but at least it is more predictable than rooming with strangers. I figured any issues would work themselves out and that an equilibrium would emerge between work and fun. An equilibrium of different kinds of fun indeed! but not without additional surprises.
To avoid distractions in our shared house, my friends and I would occasionally spend evenings studying on campus. The week before finals we decided to use the study room nightly to prepare for next week’s exam onslaught. Who could have predicted it? but much of our study time was spent cracking jokes. We would have been better off studying in a quiet campus library or a noisy cafe.
Perhaps it was on night 2 or 3 that, after a lull in the string of bad jokes, I blurted “I dare everyone to go on a road trip to the Grand Canyon!”. I don’t know where this came from, though likely my own knee-jerk reaction to the hopelessness of the study week and everyone’s desire to be anywhere else. It was clearly upping any ante, since the bet was to drive at least 2000 km and get back in time for finals. I must have thought this would just get a laugh and shut us all up. It didn’t. Spontaneous stupidity was ambient that night and the dare was taken. Over the next few minutes we did temporarily came to our senses, realizing this would minimally be a 2-day trip and we were only several days from the first finals. There was some heaving and hoeing and one of my roommates was smart or afraid or both, and said he’d pass. This left Wynken, Blynken and Nod to go on their merry way.
With Ted in Berkeley 1982
To keep the momentum, we had to leave immediately. Sleep and reflection were the enemies. So, that same night we hastily packed and drove with minimal stops to the Grand Canyon. Beyond gassing-up, we did stop for one break, got out a miniature football someone had brought and threw it around. Ted fell and badly twisted his ankle. To make things worse, it had not occurred to us that it was December and was freezing at the Grand Canyon. When we arrived late in the day we threw some snow balls at each another, and since we were unprepared and hurting, quickly drove back home, not even having spent an hour to enjoy the view. One would think that three intelligent persons would come to their senses and cut their losses by making a straight-line back home. Hell no. When we reached Bakersfield – perhaps having seen a billboard – one of us (not me) cleverly said, “hey, let’s go to Sequoia National Park!”. Dares were clearly paying dividends and we went.
We returned with a few days to spare before finals. When the grades finally came it was easy to blame the trip (and me) for less-than-hoped performances, though it’s possible that some or all of the grades were higher than they would have been had we not embarked. Speaking for myself, I would definitely do it again.
What about the roommate who stayed behind? He gloated in learning our grades, but couldn’t hide the stupidity wiped all over his face.
School’s out for summer
The Grand Canyon trip was the first time I had ventured out of California. I’ve never been particularly adventurous travel-wise and to this day feel uncomfortable in unfamiliar places, especially when on my own. The GC trip gave me some confidence and when six months later a work assignment in New Mexico presented itself, I immediately accepted.
The July 1982 trip owes to having been part of the entomology community at Berkeley. I not only made friends with fantastic people, but also had numerous opportunities to contribute and gain research experience. One of these was the Western Spruce Budworm project (WSB; see Part 1), which was in its second field season. Although having south-west similarities, New Mexico and California are very different in many ways. Each has its own architecture, cuisine and landscape. New Mexico was a definite draw for someone from suburban LA.
I had no particular expectations in agreeing to two months working on the WSB project, beyond the simplicity of our job: collect larval budworm larvae and keep them alive until they either emerged as adults or something else killed them first. The killers were parasitoids[5]: flies and wasps that attack, feed on and then kill budworms before they’re able to eclose. But in order to keep the larvae alive, they had to be fed, and my first job was to supply the New Mexico rearing facility with a large quantity of artificial diet. I was to join my colleagues one month after their arrival and with me bring the precious bullion.
Artificial diets are the fuel needed to keep biology laboratories operating: from feeding yeast or bacteria, to feeding eukaryotic cells such as human cell cultures, to keeping animals such as mice. Diets have also been developed for insect rearing, the most used for Drosophila fruit flies. But more esoteric diets are also concocted for specific purposes, one of which was the WSB project. I don’t know the ingredients going into the WSB diet, but the mixture comes out of a blender as a thick paste, which is then spread on a pan to set. The finished diet is a flat brick of about 30cm by 20cm by 1cm. To keep from drying out and be easily transported, the brick is then wrapped in aluminum foil.
You the ardent traveler can guess what happened to yours truly.
When I went through airport security in San Francisco, the metal detector rang. I was taken aside, whereupon the inspector found the foil-wrapped object in my bags and escorted me to room for questioning. There were several agents going about their business. Needless to say, the dimensions of the suspect item corresponded to a brick of hashish, and as it turns out, the color corresponded pretty exactly too. Fortunately, the smell was everything but (or my career might have taken a really unexpected turn). The inspector, probably wondering to himself “what kind of new hash is this?”, asked me what it was and I replied: “artificial diet for spruce budworms, sir”. Oddly, he didn’t seem surprised and let me on my way to catch my flight[6].
I arrived at Albuquerque airport that evening, expecting to find my friends at the exit. Well, my flight arrives on time, I collect my luggage, exit and my colleagues are not there. I knew all of them well and so it was not as if I was looking for a stranger holding a sign with my name on it. As I nonchalantly browsed people in the arrival hall, I hear “Mike! Over here!!!” I look around and still don’t see them. There was just a group of punks pointing at me and laughing hysterically. Two shaved heads, one pink Mohawk, one purple hair. My friends but not in their Berkeley bodies. I was not ashamed to be worried.
We hopped into the van and drove into the night, due north on the I25. Lots of chit chat and explanations of what they were up to and expecting of me. The desert highway in those days was not lit and as we sped along, we eventually see some red dots in the very far distance. When we were perhaps 500m away and approaching it was becoming clear that these were cars dispersed over the highway. Thinking there had been an accident, we slowed down as we entered the scene to perhaps 50km/hr., but this was too fast and too late. The stopped cars were upon us as we quickly swerved to avoid them. In the confusion, our driver didn’t see and actually ran over a cow that was lying down in the middle of the unlit highway. In a blink of an eye we saw and surmised there had been a troupe of perhaps a dozen cows that crossed the highway, several having been hit by the now parked cars. Everything happened so fast and although the cow we hit was unfortunate, we were lucky it was already lying on the road, making our van jump but not flip over. On driving a further few hundred meters, pulling over and inspecting damage to the van, all we found was a piece of hide pinned to the wheel well[7].
Geothermal site in the late 70s. Trailers housing visitors to the right.
Any expectations I had of New Mexico quickly vanished and frankly the adventures only ended when I returned two months later to Berkeley. Imagine two graduate students, three undergrads and a respectable flow of visitors, all living in closely confined quarters in two trailers about 100m from a geothermal drilling site[8]. Our only means of transportation was the van (with “Enola Gay” written prominently on both sides, which did not seem to raise brows in nearby Los Alamos) to carry a considerable amount of heavy equipment. We would visit one or more field sites daily, climb to about 25 meters into the canopies of Fir and Spruce trees, bring down branches and hunt for WSBs. We’d then place them in small tubes, keep them alive on the artificial diet and days or weeks later see whether they were parasitized and by what species. The data collected went to the project leaders in the Department of Entomology at Berkeley.
Geothermal site as it looks today. Trailer footprints lower left.
I sometimes wonder how the New Mexico trip fit into the scheme of things. For sure, it was not unexpected once I was entomology bound, but of course, I don’t know what led to my receiving the work offer in the first place. Nor do I know the more distant reasons for the Berkeley team working on the WSB in New Mexico. Perhaps quite external to my own path, there were one or more unexpected flips that through many intermediate events, were causal in me being hired.
Improbability stemming from external sources will take center stage in Part 3. But for now, there was one trip left before the Masters and had a key moment gone differently, I might be writing this, but not from my desk here in France.
Thumb
When I returned to Berkeley in late August 1982, I no longer had a rental but was still in contact with my former roommates. As it turned out, one of them (Joe) had actually been in my high school class (but we never met), and perhaps in both being Los Angelinos and enjoying physics, we hit it off well. I don’t recall how the opportunity presented itself (almost certainly Joe’s initiative), but in early summer before my New Mexico trip, we discussed a project to hitchhike across the country in September. This would mean I’d need to delay my entry into the Masters program to January 1983. I happily did.
My parents always said “Never hitchhike” along with horror stories of some unfortunates who did. Well, I was 21, had some travel experience and very adventurous. Both Joe and I had beards and looked ragged even by Berkeley standards. We tacitly thought that crazies would not dare pick us up. And just in case, we agreed on using a facial signal “no, not this ride”, if things looked dicey. We never used it, although recollecting back to some of the rides, perhaps we should have. This said, problem drivers were less of a worry than today. Danger was of little concern.
Green Tortoise circa 1982
We had no idea how many rides it would take to get across the country. Surely not more than 100? but to hedge our bets we decided to eliminate some of the travel from the equation and got tickets for what best could be described as a ‘hippie bus’. There seemed no rules except ‘you be you’. The bus took us from San Francisco to Seattle. My only memory was a stop somewhere in Oregon where everyone jumped out of the bus, ripped off their clothes and went for a dip in a hot spring. Fortunately, I was Berkeley 82 and not LA 80.
We reached Seattle and Joe had a connection there. We slept over this person’s place, who I remember was friendly and took us to see the Cascade Range. The next day they dropped us off at a promising road side and the 3000-mile hitch began. I don’t recall that first ride, but do remember most waits took hours. We were hitcher novices and clueless. It was only on day 2 or 3 when we finally discovered the strategy of hitch and hide. One hitcher was much more likely to get rides than two together. When a ride pulled over, the hider would join the hitcher as if he was always there in the open. This occasionally startled drivers, but it basically worked.
Those of you who have hitched will agree it’s not an understatement to say that hitching is an adventure. None of the more than 20 rides we got was normal. Cliché: people are people, but people are never the same. Our rides ranged from a driver asking us to drive so he could sleep in the back, to one taking us down a small dirt road blasting hard rock music (preventing Joe and me from communicating and considering jumping out and running) for miles only to wind up at his father’s bar for a drink, to one where the driver tried to feel-me-up while Joe was asleep in the back[9].
For all the 20 or so rides, we had only crossed 5 states and it gradually dawned on us that it could take several weeks and a hundred or more hitches to get to the east coast. Joe wisely had a Plan B, which was to get a drive-away car. A drive-way is a car driven for free (or a low cost) on behalf of someone who has moved a long distance, but who could not take the car to their new home. We called to reserve one in Salt Lake City[10] and while waiting for it to become available, hitched to Glacier National Park where we backpacked in what is the most fabulous wilderness I’ve ever seen.
The drive-away car was a vintage 60s VW Beetle in perfect condition. We had more than a week to deliver it to its owner in Hartford CT and so made the best of the time to visit the mid-west and points in the north-east, including Boston and NYC. When we dropped the car off at the owner’s, I do recall him being relieved to see his baby, but we had to report several mishaps, including a door window that slipped into the depths of the door. Joe told the owner he’d fixed it (in one of the Dakotas as I recall), but in reality, he’d propped it up by taping its supports with Band-Aids. The ruse fell through when the owner opened and then closed the door and glass and gravity became one. Lucky for us we hadn’t needed first aid during our trip.
The car delivered, we then took a train from Hartford to Boston to visit former roommate and Grand Canyon survivor, Ted. We were all ardent baseball fans and went to a Red Sox game, my only memory being how strange it was to have the entrance of a stadium on a city street, and once seated, getting into an unpleasant, heated argument with a true Bostoner about 1960s Red Sox starters[11]. The next day we enjoyed Ted’s hospitality including a trip to Cape Cod and boating on the Cape. No real surprises, but we still had to decide what to do with the remaining free day.
IVY
Even if the dates were not, the visit to Boston was set from the start of the trip. Ted had returned to his home in Wellesley a couple months before Joe and I set sail on the bus to Seattle. Our main unknown once in Boston was coordination to visit New York. This entailed staying with friend of Joe’s in Hoboken, New Jersey so that we could do day trips to the city. Only thing was we had an extra day on our hands in Boston before we could be received in New Jersey.
This last day in Boston was upon us and having discussed what to do, Joe and I decided to visit MIT and Harvard. Only two years prior, almost day for day, I was sitting in the Berkeley College of Life Science counselor’s office, having just learned I’d neglected a UC requirement and would need to take a year of dreaded foreign language to get my degree. Was I now going through some kind of worm-hole from that office to Cambridge Mass, to live yet another surprise life-detour? Given just how non-existent these schools were as future homes, a nod-smile encouragement to apply to either would have put me into a total quandary.
Some context here is necessary. My family was working class for generations[12] and the idea of higher education was tantamount to gallivanting. A useful life meant either burning calories through physical work or becoming a professional. So, my parents supported my going to university with the expectation I would become either a medical doctor, accountant, lawyer, engineer, or businessman. Private schools were out because of the cost and my creds were not good enough to get a scholarship. Ivy League was at the stuff of jokes and jealousy for my parents. I however was very curious and a bit cavalier.
We arrived in Cambridge and decided to go to MIT first and then walk over to Harvard.
My main memory of MIT was it being unremarkable. Not unexpected from someone who was tired and just not interested. Fortunately, we were not left to our own devices and Joe managed to get an appointment to discuss the PhD program in Physics with a counselor. On arrival, we were asked to wait in a classroom, where we found a student at the chalkboard. He was in his late teens or early 20s, tall, Institute of Technology Geeky. He had foot long curly dark brown hair. Isaac Newton’s pose flashed for a brief instant as he introduced himself. We naturally asked what he was up to and he related a problem he was trying to solve. We were able to help with the solution to the problem, which stuck in my mind as something unexpected and a positive outcome of our visit. The fun chalkboard experience however would not be enough for Joe to pursue his studies at MIT. For me, I had Harvard on my mind.
Harvard. I was accustomed to nice but less classy campuses, having grown up a mile from Cal State Northridge and attended UCLA and Berkeley. US campuses often have buildings named after people, not so much to honor great academic achievements but rather in recognition of monetary contributions to the building or part of campus bearing their name. But, as beautiful as many are, few US campuses have the history of the Ivy League, the plant namesake adorning their facades.
While walking through the Harvard campus I was taken by how well dressed the students were. My attention was unavoidably drawn to what appeared to be a group of beautiful people en train de papoter sur une pelouse parfaite. Others dawned Harvard apparel, which reminded me of the fraternity/sorority crowd that I so loathed at UCLA and Berkeley[13]. Indeed, I was tried and true Berkeley-sloven and Harvard was simply out my culture and class. It would take more than a 1980 counselor’s office-flip for me to apply to this school[14].
The stroll through campus had shifted me from curiosity to fear-be-formal mode as I entered the secretary’s office at the Department of Organismic and Evolutionary Biology. The spacious office was being renovated and I just remember one desk slightly advanced from the left-back wall, a phone, two chairs for visitors and a filing cabinet. A faux appearance for what was the gate to the Gods. The secretary put me at ease and asked what my plans were after Berkeley. I opened my mouth and words just tumbled out. I probably said “I don’t know”, which made me an instant finalist for the dumbass line of 1982. I was then asked if I was interested in meetings with faculty members. I must of have nodded since she said these could be arranged later that day or the following day. In the moment, I’d forgotten the names of my Harvard heroes and assumed she would probably just contact lesser-known, younger faculty. She did no such thing and read off names who could receive me. Gould, Levins and Lewontin and a few famous others. Despite my glassy-eyed appearance, I distinctly remember her proceeding to pick up the phone, ready to dial. For about five seconds I actually toyed with the idea of delaying our departure to New York, but fear won the day with a polite “sorry, I can’t make these meetings”, decorated with a semi-valid excuse. I was still in hitch-hiking mode.
***
As crazy as it sounds, Joe’s and my original plan was to hitchhike to the east coast and then back. That bird had flown only a quarter of the way into the first half of our round trip. Long before arriving in New York we’d each called our parents to wire us money for a flight back to Berkeley.
Upon returning, I now had to attend to serious matters and find a house rental. I landed a wonderful place on Francisco Street (see photo in Part 1) with two roommates named Mike (yes, three Mikes; imagine answering the telephone). My travels were over for the time being and growing into good stories. As 1983 arrived and I started my Masters, little did I know that a year’s end rencontre would put me on track for one of the greatest and most welcome ironies imaginable.
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[1] Entomology also had a priority effect over conservation, since I was already volunteering for entomology projects before even taking a conservation course. Conservation did enter my research program years later, quite likely influenced by experiences at CNR.
[2] Needless to say, my being in the office, the counselor, and perhaps unaccounted-for environmental factors may have primed either the counselor’s advice to change college or my split-second decision once the choice was offered. For a brilliant discourse on causality, see https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Book_of_Why
[3] 12 years on Ecology Letters – topic of a future blog post.
[4] At the time, UCLA was on the quarter system, which consisted of three 10-week sessions per academic year (and presumably an optional fourth in the summer).
[5] Which would turn out to be my main study organism for the next 20 years.
[6] It only occurs to me now that my colleagues waiting for me in New Mexico probably went through the same check a month previous.
[7] This was not the end of the drive back to the base. Several kilometers further down the road we heard a “BANG!” on the windscreen, pulled over only to find the wing of a crow somehow hinged on the van’s antenna.
[8] https://jemezvalleyhistory.org/?p=2511
[9] And one where the driver of an 18-wheeler truck told us that Bishop Ussher determined that God created Earth in 4004 BC. When the gentleman sensed the silence and asked me what I studied at Berkeley, I replied “evolution”. He abruptly stopped and dropped us off in south-west Wyoming, a spot very reminiscent of the plane-attack scene in the movie “North by Northwest”. Needless to say, it took some time to get our next ride.
[10] I don’t recall at what point, but it would have been after persistent 4-6 hour waits and tent-pitching on road sides
[11] I was a BB aficionado as a kid and attribute my adult cognitive deficiencies to memorizing the photos and stats of thousands of baseball cards.
[12] Father and both grandfathers worked as 'meat cutters'.
[13] Indeed, it was mid-September and perhaps this was just the afterglow of rush week https://prepory.com/blog/what-is-greek-life-and-should-you-rush-in-
[14] This said, not even two years later I was applying for the PhD in Ecology and Evolutionary Biology at Cornell. That’s another story.