Short Story:
A.B. Harvard; M.S. Tufts; nutrition consultant turned writer; member of the Society of Children’s Books Writers and Illustrators and Academy of Nutrition and Dietetics.
Longer Story:
I graduated magna cum laude from Harvard College with an A.B. in Classics. What would I do with Latin and Greek? Good question, ambiguous answer.
Maybe everything.
Possibly nothing.
Teaching seemed logical so I applied for a fellowship at a British boarding school where I’d inspire other impressionable young word nerds. However, I found the kids really weren’t all that into dead languages and antiquated culture. Imagine that. I guess my fascination with imagery, derivatives, and literary devices just wasn’t infectious enough.
Instead, I turned to my other passion—athletics. In high school I had been on three varsity teams (tennis, swimming and track), then in college I rowed all four years. Somewhere in there I picked up triathlon. Throughout all of this, I recognized a common thread: athletes talk about food. Incessantly.
I set my sights on sports nutrition and found a graduate program at Tufts University that combined all of my interests: I’d go for a Master of Science in Nutrition Communication. Words power a sentence the way food fuels the body. A perfect match! Just a few hurdles to conquer: chemistry, organic chemistry and biochemistry. Fun stuff. No, really, I found the why and how inside the body intriguing. Once engaged in the program, I realized a profound truth: when you talk about food, you learn a lot about people.
This was certainly the case down at the Duke Diet and Fitness Center, a residential obesity treatment facility in North Carolina. As a nutritionist, I had the great fortune of meeting wonderful people who inspired a deep appreciation for healthful living. From there we relocated to Princeton, New Jersey where I consulted independently on various projects and clients with wide-ranging goals—school lunch programs, elite athletes, college teams, corporate wellness, weight management, and adolescent health—to name a few. I analyzed nutrient intake data and I wrote nutrition articles for online and print publications. About food. Science. Goals. People. Again with the words.
But now words are stories—stories I’ve collected from those willing to share their experiences. They’re about what makes us human: our flaws and failures, but also our strengths and successes. All those themes you might find inside dust-covered tomes of Roman and Greek authors, poets and orators? (I know, I know… nerd alert!)
Currently I call San Diego home—where I run by the ocean, play tennis in the sun, train for rough-water swims, and plan to row again. But that’s just what I do in between the important stuff: crafting compelling stories and, along with my husband, raising two decent human beings (neither one an easy task).
As for whatever came of studying the Classics?
Not sure about you, but I think I know the answer.
Rebecca Marks Rudy 