Chapter 4 – An accidental state-hopping fiend

I am famous for many Jade-isms in my life.

One of my most distinguishing -isms is my ability to tell (just about) anyone I have just met my entire life story within the first five minutes of meeting them, an ability I especially honed during my time in graduate school. I often took classes outside of my department, and with each first day came the obligatory, “And if you could share your name, degree, educational background…” request. Well, okay.

Inevitably someone would respond, “Ah, cool! So Texas? You from there? How’d you end up in Georgia?”

“I actually wanted to apply to Auburn because I loved Alabama so much (this will not be the first time these people here this come out of my mouth), but UGA’s graduate school deadline for assistantships was sooner, so I applied here, was offered a position, and the rest is, well, you know…”

“Sorry, um, well, huh…”

At this point, I’ve clearly lost them, so the only thing I can do is say, “Let me just start over.”

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Of course, other memories come to me as I write this:

ice skating on the pond in someone’s backyard, cackling as I fall – hard – on my butt;

long bike rides through the woods after being cooped up all winter;

hours and hours of soccer under the hot sun;

and Friday nights under the football lights playing in the marching band (yes, I was that band kid for all of my middle and high school years).

But the other, smaller, more personally defining moments surface, too: Friday nights helping the soup ladies at church, sitting at senior scholarship nights, summer days at the pool taking the water aerobics classes (you bet I was the youngest one there), baking in my grandma’s kitchen…

In high school, I did the exact same thing. Every day. I rolled out of bed at 4:47am, threw on some workout clothes, slapped myself in the face a bit to wake up, got in the car, and drove 3.8 minutes down the road to the gym. After working out, I rushed home to get ready for school, sprinted up the neighbor’s backyard hill to meet the school bus, pulled out my book as I sat down, and when we finally arrived, I went from class to class, the book still in hand with my eyes glued to the pages.

When I got home from school, I went to work. And when I got home, I went to bed and did the same thing the next day. And the next. And the next.

Yes, I think I was an odd kid by my classmates’ definition. I was always reading, volunteering, working, riding my bike. I certainly had friends, don’t get me wrong, but I have opened up a lot since then.

Despite the monotony described above, I’d like to think I was a pretty independent child, albeit focused on learning and making money. I believe my ultimate rationale for choosing TCU was that it would cost the same amount to go there as the other college I liked near my home, so I decided it was time for an adventure. Boring me, I thought my life would operate exactly the same. (Okay, but who likes changes? Moving across the country was a big enough change in and of itself.)

You might be slightly less appalled to learn I woke up at 5:52am instead since the gym didn’t open until 6, but other than that, I lived similarly: gym, class, homework – you better believe I read every single page of those assigned textbook readings until halfway through my junior year of college – dinner, more reading, bed. Repeat. Well. That was all fine and dandy, but by my junior spring, I was a semester into my dietetic internship, I worked off-campus as a server (still to this day one of the best jobs I have ever had), and I actually made plans for the weekend. A year later, I stayed up late – by choice – because of all the aforementioned things, and I had fun. Like actual fun. And I drank coffee – I liked the taste, so why the heck not?

As my junior year ended, I was still a little uncertain about what direction my life was heading. Ever since I was about twelve, I knew I wanted a career in nutrition. I loved my undergraduate classwork and was enjoying my internship, which certainly validated me – I knew I was in the right field – but I was shocked to discover the extent to which one could practice nutrition.

I grew moderately panicked as my last summer as an undergrad and senior year approached and I still was not certain which direction to turn. I figured I would just go to graduate school, mostly because I did not feel competent enough at anything to be a real adult. I had particularly enjoyed the experiences in college where I taught kids about gardening and nutrition, but I didn’t actually know the first thing about gardening, or farming, so I decided to apply for a field hand position at a farm just down the road from my house.

Within days of starting at the farm, I was enthralled and began to fit my perception and interest of nutrition into this new, agricultural sphere.

In hindsight, absolutely nothing about the work we did my first day there screamed, “This is the coolest thing in the world!” In fact, we weeded row after row after row of corn. For six hours. The real magic occurred when I recognized the immense beauty – the sky impossibly blue, the birds utterly cheerful, and the sun-soaked farm absolutely glistening with undisturbed morning dew – and the sheer possibility, education and culinary alike, spreading before me.

Skip forward to the beginning of 2019: I was all set to move back up to the Midwest to start a Master’s in Sustainable Agriculture at Iowa State University, and it all felt fine. I really wanted to get “farming 101” out of graduate school and thought this certainly had to be the answer. I had found out a few weeks prior on a recent visit this was not really the case about the program, but I was bound and determined to make it work.

But then (duh duh duh … just kidding this is a good thing), in March I got an email from the administrative assistant in the ~Department of Nutritional Sciences at TCU~ (ahhh I miss the days of studying nutrition – I lived in those offices) about some gap year fellowship at a place called Project Horseshoe Farm. The specific position was for the role of a Farming, Health, and Nutrition fellow, and I’ll tell you something – it was almost exactly what I was looking for. I would get to work on a farm for about half the time and the other half would be spent engaging in community health and nutrition education work; this fellowship position was seemingly perfect.

And then I learned it was in Alabama, which was not a problem, but I realized I knew absolutely nothing about Alabama. Zilch. I mean, I knew where it was located on the map, but my knowledge ended there. Well, I applied and as you’ll come to learn, I accepted the position with much joy (I LOVE Alabama).

I could on and on about my job and life in Alabama, but I’ll spare you – but only because I talk more about that in the next chapter.

There’s an odd feeling when your body and mind and the surrounding people and world around you feel so utterly and truly connected…if you have felt this before, well, that, for me, was Alabama. If you haven’t, I urge you to keep waiting. It will come and it will be the best thing that has ever happened to you.

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“So, somehow you ended up in Georgia?”

Ah, yes, thanks for reminding me!

I would like to take this brief interlude to tell you, my fellow readers, I never give anyone this entire rundown in the first five minutes. Or ever really. (Unless prompted, which, now that I rethink about it, is semi-often.) I usually just hit the highlights. You’re lucky, though; you got it all.

My fellowship in Alabama was a 13-month position, so eventually I had to start thinking about what came next. I had fully decided on something in the agriculture field, and eventually wound up reapplying to graduate school, but for agricultural education programs. I meant to apply to a few different programs, namely Auburn and Georgia so I could stay in the region of the South I had so dearly fell in love with, but I ended up only applying to Georgia. The professor who would become my research professor, Dr. Jason Peake, called me out of the blue one day in December of 2019. We got to talking, and as they say, “the rest is history.”

Actually, what happened was, we talked, I visited, I applied, and then he offered me an assistantship. Shortly into my master’s program, he asked if I would like to be his doctoral research assistant.

And that is the not-so-short story of how a Minnesota gal ended up in Georgia by way of Texas and Alabama. I always intended to move back to Minnesota after undergrad, but you know, sometimes when life wants to take you on a journey first, you just have to shake your head in laughing, hopeful wonderment and resignation, and say,