Graduate Takes Road Less Travelled, Plans Career in Outdoor Education

Most Harvard seniors accept their degree as if it were a baton, rushing off to the next lap of life—sometimes a stint in investment banking or professional school.

But Sarah E. Kleinschmidt ’05 grabbed her diploma and sprinted off the beaten path, straight into the woods, where she spent last summer maintaining hiking trails, greeting backpackers, and laying the foundations of what she is planning to be a five-year career in outdoor education.

“I [got] paid to do what a lot of people pay to do on their vacations,” says Kleinschmidt, who spent the summer cooking over a campfire and watching sunsets while working as a shelter caretaker in Vermont for the Green Mountain Club.

“It’s a completely different lifestyle—I was living in a cabin on a mountain,” she says. Rather than mastering key commands in Excel and taking midday Starbucks breaks, Kleinschmidt quickly began to exercise a new skill set. Her workday included cleaning up the trail, digging, water drainage, and moving rocks around.

And after a day of labor, there were no bars or restaurants to retreat to for cocktails and gossip. Instead she conversed with hikers, sharing tidbits about the history of the trail and environmental conservation.

Kleinschmidt’s chosen pursuit—outdoor education—is a far throw from the more secure trajectories upon which most Harvard graduates embark. Forgoing creature comforts and even modest financial security, she has instead opted for an off-road foray into the wilderness, where she hopes to hone an unconventional skill set before settling upon a more permanent route.

INTO THE WILD

Work in the outdoors is largely a seasonal business, and the chills of mid-October brought Kleinschmidt’s Green Mountain Club work to a close. When she returned from the trail, she dusted off her degree in biology and mind, brain, and behavior, and spent the fall and early winter in Boston working in a neurobiology lab at the Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center.

Kleinschmidt, who was researching dyslexia in a rat model, says she was hoping to publish her undergraduate thesis as well.

While back in Boston, she remembered her dislike for the urban lifestyle. “I hate living in a city and working nine to five,” she says.

She headed back to the woods this month for a four-week Emergency Medical Technician (EMT) certification and wilderness training program, a preparation that many outdoor jobs require. Upon completing the training, Kleinschmidt plans to move to Colorado to work for Deer Hill Expeditions, a program that runs outdoor travelling and service trips for high school students.

The job runs until early summer, and after that Kleinschmidt’s plans are uncertain.

“You get a lot of practice applying to jobs, because you can have easily three different jobs within a year,” Kleinschmidt says. “Your resume gets pretty long, pretty quickly.”

She says she has a list of 10 to 15 jobs and organizations she’d like to work for over the next few years. And even in the woods, networking and relationships with past employers help make it possible to return to certain jobs and tap into new opportunities.

FIRST STEPS

At Harvard, Kleinschmidt played rugby, worked as a First-Year Outdoor Program (FOP) leader, and served as a prefect. Her outdoors resume also includes working at a summer camp she had gone to as a child.

Kleinschmidt learned about the Green Mountain Club caretaker position through the summer camp, a place which she says “initiated me in the outdoor education world.”

Because many positions in outdoor education do not accept applications until a few months before they begin, Kleinschmidt did not apply for her summer job until after spring break of her senior year, and her plans were not finalized until last April.

She originally came to Harvard thinking she’d become a politician, and also considered working for Teach for America or certain non-profits in Washington, D.C. after graduation.

But she ruled out such work once she decided she “didn’t want the commitment and didn’t want the lifestyle of a city.”

“At some level, I knew that I wasn’t going to follow a traditional path. I sure as hell knew I wasn’t going to be an investment banker,” says Kleinschmidt. “At this age, when you’re young and healthy and have a Harvard diploma...there’s no real reason to not spend some time doing something that you love.”

Jenny Davis ’06, a friend of Kleinschmidt’s who played rugby with her, was not surprised by Kleinschmidt’s post-graduation plans.

“She’s someone who loves to be outdoors and even though I think she’s brilliant and good at lab research, it’s not something she needs to be doing,” Davis says. “I couldn’t expect her to have a desk job.”

Naupaka B. Zimmerman ’05, another friend of Kleinschmidt’s, felt the same. “I don’t think I would have seen her doing any traditional career path,” he says. “She’s always forged her own way.”

Zimmerman notes that Kleinschmidt told him that she found her summer work to be rewarding. “It was a good time for her, she said, to take a deep breath and chill out a bit,” he says.

THRILLS, SKILLS, NO DOLLAR BILLS

While Kleinschmidt reaps many personal rewards from her outdoor experiences, she admits the financial benefits are not as great.

“None of these jobs pay a lot...but you also don’t spend a lot, because you’re in the woods,” she says.

“You have to be able to withstand a certain level of instability and uncertainty in terms of being mobile and working seasonal jobs,” she says. “This is part of the lifestyle—you move around a lot.”

Davis describes additional challenges facing those who work in outdoor education, such as securing health insurance. “In a lot of ways, you have to be doubly-responsible because it doesn’t take care of you the way white-collar careers do,” Davis says.

Brent Bell, director of FOP when Kleinschmidt was a leader and now an assistant professor in outdoor education at the University of New Hampshire, says work in outdoor education has a different set of benefits.

“It’s an experience where you have a lot of time for reflection and a lot of time to really think and reevaluate where you are and where you’re going to go next,” Bell says.

“I really think that no matter what you’re going to do for a job in the future, working in outdoor education is just a great way to grow up. You learn a lot about yourself and you also get to learn how people work, both in the best of times and worst of times,” he says.

Kleinschmidt says she is happy to learn and teach in the great outdoors for the next five years or so and eventually use her experiences to transition into a career in education, environment policy work, or even medical school.

“I feel like I have a pretty good idea of what I want in general, so as long as each small piece is in line with that, then I’ll be happy with where I’ll end up,” she says.

And if all else fails, the soon-to-be certified EMT has an emergency escape route.

“I think the unique thing about being a Harvard graduate is that it allows you to take chances because you always have a backup plan of your Harvard diploma,” she says.

—Staff writer Brittney L. Moraski can be reached at bmoraski@fas.harvard.edu.