ODP member's interest spans geosciences to creative writing

After working in the Ocean Drilling Program (ODP) for more than sixteen years, 2007 will be the year that Jennifer Pattison-Rumford, the Electronic Publications Specialist for ODP, will bid adieu to the College of Geosciences at Texas A&M when her publication releases its final volume.

However, rather than viewing this crucial change as a drawback, the publishing veteran has been preparing for change in an unconventional manner. She is pursuing a Master of Fine Arts in Creative Writing through a correspondence program at Goddard College in Vermont, and has been fusing her background in publishing with her life experiences to create the content of her thesis.

“My thesis is the story of an American family living in Mexico in the 1950s. You know that they always say: Write what you know. So I wrote about what I know, having grown up in Mexico where my father was working at a gold mine as a geologist. The story is not a memoir, but should probably be classified as autobiographical fiction, definitely fiction,” Pattison-Rumford said.

An MFA could reasonably be viewed as a stark departure from Pattison-Rumford’s firm roots in the disciplines of geosciences. As an undergraduate at the University of Idaho, she worked for the Idaho Geological Survey. In addition to her time at ODP, she has been working as the Managing Editor of the first peer-reviewed web-based paleontology journal (PE) for ten years as an honorarium. Palaeontologia Electronica (PE) is based in the home site of a server at Texas A&M University (palaeo-electronica.org). In fact, even Pattison-Rumford’s father was a geologist whose many excavations led her family to locations throughout the world.

“I have worked all my adult life in publishing, and have been a writer for longer than that,” she said. “When I began to think about what I want to do after ODP ends, I decided I want to write and teach writing. The MFA is a terminal degree and allows me to look for positions at college level.”

However, Pattison-Rumford finds ways to connect the two worlds; her work with the Aggie-based Palaeontologia Electronica has given her the experience in remote work that is vital to her daily juggles.

“The group of scientists who are on staff live all around the globe - Egypt, Australia, Spain, Sweden, England, Canada, the United States and Germany. We have never had a staff meeting, because we've never been on the same continent. Even without taking the international clientele of ODP into consideration, I have been doing remote work for many years,” she said.

Pattison-Rumford came to The Texas A&M University College of Geosciences to assist in the conversion of printed publications of the ODP from the traditionally typeset and printed form into electronic media. She created the first ODP CD-ROM, and the budget for printing was slashed, she led the conversion of printed journals into online publication.

While some may not consider working in publishing in the discipline of oceanography to be very exciting, Pattison-Rumford refuted this notion and described a typical day of working in the ODP as very hectic and very interesting.

“We deal with people all around the globe, and are always operating under strict deadlines. And the element of electronic publications makes it even more interesting, because software changes, operating systems are dropped, and things change all the time. It is very intense and more fun than you could imagine,” she said.

Although the college from which Pattison-Rumford is receiving her MFA is located in Vermont, she said the distance from her academic home base has never been an issue.

“Because of list servers and emails, I can share ideas and manuscripts with writers all over the world. One of my peer reviewers lives in South Africa, another in England. But here is something funny - one of the women I work with on a writer's list server works at A&M!” Pattison-Rumford said.

Working on such complex projects of diverse disciplines requires maintaining a gulf between the knowledge you needed for Pattison-Rumford’s job at the Ocean Drilling Program and the skills you need for your thesis. She said this balance is not quite overwhelming, but at times, is hectic.

“Taking on the MFA honed my management skills to the razor's edge. I had to do a minimum of four hours a day of MFA-work, plus maintain my full-time ODP position, and continue with the PE journal. I am lucky because I get by on very little sleep, but there were things I had to give up,” she said.

Despite the changes that led to her MFA and the stress of her current schedule, Pattison-Rumford said she is very happy with the way things have turned out.

“My job at ODP is terrific, I love the way my brain has to work so hard to meet the demands of the PE audience, and the MFA was the most satisfying process I have ever gone through,” Pattison-Rumford said. “My mother was right [when she said], ‘You work hard and achieve things, or you can stay home and watch TV.’”

Ironically, Pattison-Rumford will not be able to attend her graduation ceremony when she receives her MFA this year. “I can't attend graduation. I ran out of vacation time - so I mailed my thesis in!” she said.