Profile from Department of Horticulture Graduate, Kelly Norris
Graduated Summer, 2011

The Other Graduate School Project

By Kelly Norris

My educational experience at Iowa State inside the classroom has meant as much for my career as those experiences I’ve had outside the classroom.  My first book—the Iowa Gardener’s Travel Guide—grew out of my B.S. honors project and was published in December 2008, the same month that I earned my B.S.  But after a six year journey, my time as a student in the Horticulture Department finally came to a close in August 2011, culminating in the M.S. degree that I received after studying with Dr. Bill Graves.  But not knowing how to say no to opportunities when they knock, I undertook another project during my graduate school days, another ‘outside-the-classroom’ experience that has amounted to another stepping stone in my career.

First, a little background information.  I came to Iowa State as a B.S. student with a little horticultural experience in tow—I’d run Rainbow Iris Farm (www.rainbowfarms.net), a 7.5-acre mail-order nursery with my parents since I was 15, a project that I schemed my parents into at the supper table.  We relocated the business from near Austin, Texas to our farm near Bedford, Iowa in September 2002.  My passion for irises began a few years before that when my grandma, already keenly aware of the green-spirited interest she was cultivating in her grandson, took me to an iris nursery in Nebraska.  I bought ten varieties that day, and it’s been a downhill slide from there!

Fast-forward to 2009.  Now through my B.S. program, my first book, and technically my second (though that’s another story), I started my M.S. program and later that fall was appointed editor-in-chief of Irises, the official magazine of The American Iris Society, after serving as guest editor since late 2007.  Keeping with the iris theme of that year (and of this story), I got an email from Tom Fischer, executive editor at Timber Press just after Christmas asking me if I was interested in writing a book about bearded irises.  After a serious five minutes of thought and a fair amount of excited yelling, I dashed an email back to him with my answer—yes, of course!  After negotiating the proposal and the contract, I signed the deal in March 2010.

So began ‘the other graduate school project,’ only after the approval of Dr. Graves, who encouraged me to pursue the project as long as I kept it in balance with my life as a graduate student.  I started seriously writing the book in early July 2010 and worked on it steadily through the fall and winter, and then furiously in March 2011 as the deadline approached.  63,744 words and 406 photos later—I finished and mailed the manuscript to my editors on April 5, 2011.  Though I’m not sure I’d readily recommend it, I enjoyed the whole experience of writing a book plus graduate school, which I probably wouldn’t have said even six months ago.  But after all that work and frustration, it seems totally worth it.  And not knowing how to turn a good thing down, I’m already in the midst of negotiations for the next project with Timber Press.  Stay tuned!

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