Elias Monastersky

Green Group

Mentor/sage monologue
A special thanks to my dad, Richard Monastersky, for letting me interview
him.

Hi I assume you came to hear my story. Well it all started when I

was born. I was born in the age of Apollo. As you might know,
astronauts were regarded as heroes and celebrities. Everyone big or
small wanted to be one. I of course was right along with them
worshiping astronauts as well as others explorers, like the deep-sea
diver, Jacques Cousteau.
Then when I was in fourth grade, I had a school project, and
chose to go to the Hartford Courant to see how newspapers were
made. I found it quite interesting but little did I know that journalistic
writing would become my career. That year, the Watergate scandal
broke and made a big impression on the entire country and me. People
started to regard journalists as heroes. I was the perfect age for these
famed journalists to become my heroes, and I wasnt alone. Many TV
shows and movies began to come out that cast a journalist as the hero.
In high school, I joined the school newspaper and worked my way up
from being reporter to an editor. During college I followed other
interests in physics and film and temporarily put journalism aside. But

when I had finished college and I couldnt find a job in the film industry,
I returned to scientific journalism.
You know, journalism is a weird thing; it really changed how I
viewed the world. Over my career, I have seen journalism change. We
were once regarded as heroes but now we are now part of a
contracting industry with fewer jobs by the day. It is different from
when I started back in high school. But I have done many great and
memorable things; I have visited all seven continents, stuck hammers
in flowing lava, rafted the Grand Canyon with geologists, and worked
with one of the largest atom colliders in the planet all for journalism. I
have had a front row seat in watching science change through these
last thirty years.