Inside the Mind of Sarah Boon: Unveiling the Untold Struggles Behind a Field Scientist’s Groundbreaking Journey
HMM: The stories of these women did the beautiful work of reminding readers about the universal elements of your own story. In the first chapter you describe writing in your journal or diary almost religiously, using it as a way to document what you’re experiencing as a scientist and a writer, and download what you were working on – or what you wish you’d been working on instead. Did journaling help you figure out how to navigate both your love of fieldwork and writing?
SB: Journaling was great, and it was really helpful for me to see in my journals what I should be doing. But then I didn’t listen to my journals. I would write in my journals, “I shouldn’t be a scientist, I should be a writer.” And then I would go out and science things and think, “Oh, I don’t think I can be a writer, I’m not very good at it.” And then I’d go back to my journal and write, “Yeah, this is great, I’m such a good writer” – and then go away from my journal again and say, “No, I need to be a scientist.” So I would write in my journal and, like you said, download my experiences, and I would dissect them in a way and think about what they meant and what they meant to me personally. And then, like I said, I would have these great inspirations, and then I wouldn’t follow up on them. So that’s something I’m trying to be better about now. Because if you’re not going to listen to yourself, how do you trust yourself?
