mynameisdumbnuts wrote:
What about if she had attended uni to study history? She could have done groundbreaking work on Napoleon and written the book that's "the last word" on him -- like Eustacia and that Greek chap she wrote about. It would have combined history, languages and writing, the three things she loves.
I have trouble seeing Joey as an academic (I'm an academic myself).
I think her strength with history is on the narrative end - she has a good sense of the flow of history, and can tell vivid stories about people and events, and bring about a real sense of time and place. So I think she could do quite well as a tour guide, or as a docent in a museum or historical site. Or, as she ends up doing, writing historical fiction.
But the more research end is quite different. She'd need to pass the entrance exams for university, for one thing. And research involves a lot of quiet, meticulous work that mostly occurs in isolation. Academic writing is also its own thing, and is almost never described as a "crisp, racy style" (the way Jo's writing is).
Jo also really enjoys immediate and enthusiastic responses - girls who loved her books and are thrilled to meet Joey Bettany, for example, or, early on, CS girls who think it's amazing that she's writing books. As a tour guide, she'd get tourists who enjoyed the experience. But the vast majority of researchers aren't known outside their own field (or even well within it), and inside the field praise tends to be on the more restrained side (like "That's a really nice piece of analysis" as a major compliment, or getting a good research grant).
Someone like Stacie I can see thoroughly enjoying the solitary intellectual work and wrestling with a problem, and gradually building up a reputation as a scholar. I can't see Joey being happy in that sort of job. What I could see is Joey as an established writer collaborating with a historian on a popular history book for children - her writing style and narrative gift combined with someone else's work on the academic end.