Pisces in the house

As early birthday wishes begin to arrive, I find myself looking back over a life that has, at least so far, proved to be a great adventure.  My education was all I could have hoped for -- indeed, it is what I would recommend to any student today who wonders if they need to know when they go to college what they wish to do with their degree(s).  When I went to college, I imagined that I would be a physical education teacher.  It did not take more than two quarters to disabuse me of that notion -- and to find an advanced rhetoric course that required that I write deliberately, and often.  A liberal undergraduate education led to the graduate program in English.  I more or less fell upon my first professional job after college, and from that point on I was able to leverage positions that I loved, where I was rarely bored.  Once I got bored, though, I moved on.  It may now look like my experience was continuous and deliberate, but its central premise was that I was doing interesting work that made a difference.  And that I was using my interest in reading, writing and thinking with each of those positions.

All these years later, I still am doing interesting work that matters.  Along the way, I've had experience in many types of institutions.  My husband made this power point slide for his lecture on the day that the proof of my first book arrived. He wanted to show his students the power of an English degree.

The biggest change-up over the years is that I'm now comfortable enough in my own skin to do several different types of things at the same time.  I don't work for one company, though I do teach only at the University of Washington.  My consulting practice feeds my research interests.  Writing and speaking are the icing on a cake that I have baked, from scratch.

I'd like to take this opportunity to thank all the folks I've worked with over the years, as well as the friends and family that have had to put up with me across these adventures.  Your energy continues to feed my own.

Report from the field.

Annie & Lauren Du Graf --July 2009 Launch Party for ASA

I'm a very lucky woman.  I have the benefit of a learned critical intelligence reading and critiquing my book manuscript.  That would be Lauren Du Graf, ASA's first research associate and my good friend.  She saw early versions of the several chapters of the book last spring -- and she was on the receiving end last weekend when I finished the entire manuscript on the deadline I'd set for an early first cut.  She's the only person to date, in fact, who has read the whole manuscript.

So on Tuesday afternoon she delivered the news -- what I had described as a practical, hands-on manual filled with tips and checklists and titled "Safer, Not Sorry: Taking Reasonable Precautions" had morphed into another type of book, one with a distinctive voice that not only offered advice but also told stories with words and pictures.  She found that three of the four sections could be reworked, but wondered about the fourth which should be dropped if it could not be improved.  I am making it sound less polite than she put it, but that's what I like so much about working with her again -- she tells the truth and has an unerring eye for incongruities and fluff.

The result is that I've rewritten the introduction of the book, providing a better basis for the new title, "Advice from a Risk Detective: At Home, At Work, Online and On the Road."  And I have gutted and reframed the fourth section to an acceptable level, with more rewrite in store of course.  She has challenged me everywhere to be more explicit and state how I came to understand what risk is and how it can be managed.

I have a fair number of close friends, and a wide circle of colleagues.  Since we started working together on constructing the content for the ASA website, Lauren has both supported and challenged me without ever sucking up.  Tomorrow, we'll meet with the book's designer.  I asked her originally to sit in because she often is able to represent my perspective better than I can myself.  This time, though, she'll be sitting as an active partner because she's helped make the book as good as it will be in another week.