Kristi Ackerman

Let's see...I did a lot of muddling around trying to figure out what to be when I grew up. Which was a little scary when I'd grown up and still hadn'tdecided. After high school, I had one year at the University of Santa Clara, in Santa Clara, Calif. It was a nice place, but culture shock overwhelmed me, and I took a year off, living part of the time in Lima, Peru. I finished college at Catholic University in Washington, D.C., majoring in drama. What do you do with a drama degree if you decide not to move to New York and wait tables, like your entire class? The answer is, not much.

I moved to L.A. and worked for a travel company for two years, then decided I really did want to move to New York, so I did, and lived there for five years. When I left (to go back to L.A.), I had just got started with copy editing, which became my long-sought career. In L.A., I worked at Shape magazine, then switched to newspapers with the L.A. Daily News. Oh, yeah, and I got married, to a sportswriter and editor. In fact, 23 three years after our high school graduation, two ex-BHSers (Carie Osburn and Debbie Lohse) came to my wedding. Not bad for a bunch of far-flung vagabonds. After a year at the Mercury News, in San Jose (during which time Rudy Crespo and I managed to not see each other once, despite our best efforts), we found ourselves moving to the New York area when I got a job with The New York Times, where I'm a staff editor. We've been here almost two years, and I'm still kind of surprised to find myself back on the East Coast (I love California!). As for our immediate plans, we just bought a house (but that doesn't mean we have to stay here!), which is a much better alternative than being turned down as renters because we have dogs (we had a cat and a parrot, too, but they're no longer with us).

I look forward to seeing your pages and catching up with all of you.