Adventure careers: think outside the cubicle!

Career World, Jan, 2005 by Andrea Faiad

Does the idea of dressing in business-casual clothes and sitting in a gray, partitioned-off cubicle make you want to scream? Maybe you crave something that offers a bit more adventure. If so, you're in luck.

What does adventure mean? "What one person might consider adventurous, another may not," says Linda Spencer, a career counselor at Harvard University and an adventurer herself. Spencer competed on the TV show Survivor: Africa. "There isn't one definition for it. There are thousands of fields out there."

Whether you're an introvert who wants to dig for dinosaurs, an extrovert who dreams of teaching others to skydive, or just a person who doesn't want a plain vanilla, 9-to-5 gig, you can make it happen.

Career World caught up with four people who looked for adventure in their careers--and found it.

TRAVEL WRITER

When people hear what Sara "Sam" Benson does for a living, jaws drop.

"I say I'm a travel writer, and universally the response is, 'You must have the best job in the world,'" says the 29-year-old with a laugh, talking by phone from her office at Lonely Planet in Oakland, Calif.

Benson's writing has taken her all over Asia, the South Pacific, Hawaii, Canada, and parts of the continental United States, all places she never imagined--back when she was a teenager attending a math and science high school in a Chicago suburb--that she'd be paid to visit.

The travel bug bit her when she was an exchange student in Japan. It took over her life after she earned a liberal arts degree from the University of Chicago, completed a two-year teaching stint in Japan, and spent almost a year traveling in Asia.

Benson had used Lonely Planet guidebooks during her travels and thought she could write guidebooks too. She sent the company a cover letter and resume, highlighting her fluency in Japanese and youthful attitude to distinguish her from most of the company's travel writers, who tended to be older and spoke only English, she says.

Benson won over the Lonely Planet editors by writing a sample chapter about a town in Laos. She officially became a travel writer six months later, when Lonely Planet hired her to write a book about Japan. Benson spent the next five years traveling around the world, writing book after book.

"I felt like I was a graduate student of life, like I was being paid to learn about whatever I wanted to learn about," Benson says. "Whether it was kayaking or [aboriginal] peoples in northern Japan or walking on the Great Wall of China, it was like a three-dimensional classroom--but there were no tests, no exams, and only one book report at the end. I was hooked. When you travel, you're stunned by the amount of beauty [and] treasure that's out there to be seen, tasted, trekked, climbed, whatever."

As much as she loves it, though, Benson warns that travel writing isn't nonstop glamour and excitement. It's exhausting--and sometimes dangerous. She's endured sexual harassment and difficult border crossings. Benson had to learn to pace herself, to rely on her gut instinct, and to ask strangers for help when she needed it. "You have to decide how [worthwhile] it is to you to put up with the grief," she says.

OCEANOGRAPHER

Not every day yields a major scientific discovery for oceanographer Dwight Coleman, but enough days do. He's the director of research for the Institute for Exploration in Mystic, Conn. Coleman leads underwater expeditions to map and explore the seafloor and to document discoveries. His team uses advanced technologies, including sophisticated sonar, robotic vehicles, and submersibles.

"It can be frustrating and boring to collect a single sample from the seafloor. But once that sample is recovered and analyzed, it could be a unique discovery that teaches us about Earth or human history," says the 37-year-old, who has a doctorate in oceanography from the University of Rhode Island.

On another trip, Coleman and his team discovered four shipwrecks off the coast of Bulgaria. One of those ships was 2,400 years old--the oldest ever found in the Black Sea--and contained fish bones that offered valuable insight into ancient trade. Coleman also found a 1,500-year-old ship off the coast of Turkey in 100 feet of water. It was almost perfectly preserved, and the wooden mast was still standing.

"The thrill of it all outweighs the drawbacks," says Coleman, who has had a lifelong passion for the natural environment. Through high school, college, and postgraduate studies, he worked diligently in math and the sciences to reach his goal of making intriguing scientific discoveries. That potential of discovery, of adding to science and history, is what keeps him diving in submarines and being at sea even in harsh weather.

ADVENTURE TRIP GUIDE

Although adventures inherently pose some risk, pursuing them does not have to mean risking your life, says Lari Shea, owner and manager of Ricochet Ridge Ranch and the Redwood Coast Riding Vacations in Mendocino, Calif.

She's been chased by a lion in Africa, attacked by three elephants and a spitting cobra, stranded during a blizzard in the mountains of Patagonia, and nearly drowned while crossing a river, but she's not usually in any danger: "Safety comes first" is her policy.