I was 50 feet underwater in the middle of the Pacific Ocean, looking for a metaphor. It was my first dive on a weeklong expedition in the remote Revillagigedo archipelago, 300 miles from mainland Mexico.

I was adjusting my camera equipment when a big flash moved past me. It was a dolphin, but something was strange about it: it had two tails. It took a moment before I realized that it was a mother dolphin giving birth.

I was on this trip ostensibly to write a review of a new luxury diving wristwatch, but the scene in front of me provided a perfect hook for my story: it’s not really about the watch; it’s the things you experience while wearing it.

The same can be said of an education. Who would have imagined back in the mid-1990s when I got a liberal arts degree from the U of M that I would end up becoming a “test pilot for the world’s most illustrious undersea timepieces,” as The New York Times called me in 2017? Graduation isn’t the end of something; it’s the beginning.

After earning my diploma but not knowing how to channel my English literature and creative writing skills, I turned to technical writing, penning manuals for packaging machinery. From there, it was jobs in marketing, project management, and medical device regulatory affairs. Then I answered an ad for a freelance writer to cover adventure travel and outdoor gear. At first I was moonlighting, but soon I had built enough contacts and experience to make the leap to full time freelance work, writing for prestigious publications both in print and online.

This was in the mid-2000s, and around the same time, I learned to scuba dive. Eventually, my interests distilled into the most niche of specialties: diving with watches and writing about it.

My work has taken me all over the world, from the choppy waters of Japan to a chilly fjord in New Zealand to a giant underwater cave in Belize.

Although today my writing largely focuses on dive watches, I’ve used it as a way to tell stories about adventures, to inspire other people to take some risks and care about this amazing planet.

Adaptability, curiosity, and adventuresome thinking—traits encouraged by a liberal arts education—can lead to work you might never predict. Not to mention providing a few good metaphors.

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