Janine Krippner
I hit a pretty big personal milestone last week. I paid off my student loan nearly 22 years to the week that it began to accumulate.
I am incredibly grateful for that loan. In a world where education is expensive, it got me my bachelor’s and master’s degrees, my first two major steps towards becoming a volcanologist.
Janine Krippner
Without a loan I simply could not have gone to university.
The path to becoming a volcanologist is a long one. I was a young teen at Te Awamutu College when I discovered that a volcanologist was a thing.
I will never forget sitting in geography class, being hit with the clear knowing that this was my life path. I had always loved volcanoes and now I had been shown a way I could dedicate my life to them.
To be a volcanologist, earning a PhD is almost always a bare minimum.
Thankfully nothing in my childhood taught me that I could not pursue lofty goals. My parents instilled an attitude of ‘you can do whatever you want, just work hard.’ As long as I am happy, they are happy. I know how fortunate I am to have this family background.
I would spend 10 years in university. Five at the University of Waikato, then after a few years in Australia gaining valuable work and life experience, five more earning my PhD in the United States. I finished in late 2017.
I had assumed that I would then get a couple of postdoc positions (temporary post-PhD research positions), then find a permanent job.
In reality, the job market was getting tougher and there was a major global event around the corner.
After a year in a small town in West Virginia, I landed in Washington D.C. in disbelief that I was working in the Smithsonian Natural History Museum.
Short-term contracts meant very little life stability, but along with working hard at science communication on top of my jobs, I was gaining valuable experience.
Then 2020 hit. In the simplest and most understated summary: the pandemic hit, I burned out, I moved back home to Te Awamutu with my cats, and my life path was altered along with millions of others. Alongside navigating Ehlers-Danlos Syndrome, I have achieved plenty of character-building throughout this journey.
In the years after I moved home, I bounced around the country and landed in Wellington.
Budget and job cuts in the last couple of years slashed my options, but I was fortunately headhunted for a remote role with a US company.
This was thanks to all of that science communication work.