It's been such a long time since I’ve written in on these pixel-pages that many of you may not know or remember me. I, like so many of us, was living in the city, dreaming about running away to someplace tropical to dive for a living. Thing is, for better or worse: I followed through with it. I now live in Hawaii teaching new divers and guiding tourists around the reef.

In many ways, the job is precisely what you would expect and just as I had daydreamed about all those days at my desk. In many others, it is very different; it can be incredibly challenging physically, psychologically, and even emotionally. At times, it’s just a job, just like any other. But, I find that which is most reliably interesting is the eccentricities of the work that it’s hard to imagine exist from the outside.

As some of you know, I’ve been interested in joining the NY Aquarium Dive Team since I was first aware of its existence. I’ve been volunteering as a docent at the Central Park Zoo for thre years (like the aquarium, the CPZ is part of the Wildlife Conservation Society, which oversees NYC’s 5 zoos), and I got certified in scuba diving a little over a year ago. The Aquarium Dive Team just seemed like a perfect union of my two favorite hobbies. Holding me back for awhile was the fact that I live so far away from the aquarium, which is located in Coney Island, and the fact that I don’t drive (it’s a phobia). I’m still working on that, but I decided it was time to stop using that as an excuse and just go for it.

Profile: Zach Rome, Founder of The Schooba Academy

For the past two years, I taught middle school science at an inner-city school in Brooklyn. It was the most rewarding experience of my life, but also the most challenging.

So many of my students were simply uninterested in the whole idea of school, and I was surprised (not to mention heartbroken) to learn that this included science! Their lack of engagement with this most encompassing subject puts them at a severe disadvantage. The National Science Foundation predicts that 80% of jobs in the next decade will require some form of math or science! And so, at the end of this past school year, I left my position as a teacher to start an organization that would address the challenges I faced in the classroom, and help provide my students and others like them with the benefits of an interest in the sciences. It is The Schooba Academy’s mission to foster a sustained engagement in science for students from low-income communities through the learning of scuba diving.