From Frist to the farm: An unconventional path

No, Slovenski is not working behind the scenes at an advertising agency. Nor does he market new products. Instead, he works with cattle and horses on a ranch in California. As the economic downturn weakened job prospects for recent graduates, Slovenski decided to pursue an unconventional solution.

Frustrated by his lack of success in searching for a job, Slovenski accepted an offer from a friend’s family to work on its ranch. In September, he moved to California to begin work, joining Clint Montague ’09, who works on the same ranch.

“I was never under the impression that I’d be taking ranching on as a permanent occupation,” he said, explaining, “Once I heard this offer, it just kind of stood out as something interesting and rewarding.” He added that he thought it would be a good idea to get some “hard manual labor under my belt … before being stuck behind a desk.”

At Princeton, Slovenski majored in mechanical and aerospace engineering, and like many students, he filled his time with several extracurricular activities. He competed for the track team in both the pole vault and the decathlon. In his freshman year, he co-founded the Colosseum Club, which organizes events like dodgeball tournaments and water fights as alternatives to the weekend activities of the Street.

Being able to run fast, jump high and juggle many activities has likely helped Slovenski on the ranch, where he has been kept busy with a slew of responsibilities.

“Things have been pretty exciting here, especially these first two months,” he said. His responsibilities include feeding and taking care of the cattle, and breaking colts. There has also been a large amount of construction work — mending fences, building a bridge and tapping mountain springs for water. And this past week marked the beginning of branding season, ushering in a new host of duties for Slovenski.

Because of the sheer size of the ranch, unexpected tasks arise on top of the daily ones. “When you’re working on a ranch, you’re basically responsible for every problem you see,” Slovenski noted. When Slovenski and a fellow rancher saw “two cows stuck in mud in a pond,” they knew they had to act. They attached a chain to their truck and dragged both animals out — one was dead, but the other was in the middle of giving birth.

While the transition from Princeton to the ranch marked a major lifestyle change for Slovenski, he also said his time at the University helped him in his approach to ranch work. He said he was “a little bit prepared” for the ranch work by “the patient and deliberate nature” of his studies at the University, noting the careful attention to detail involved in both.

When his stint at the ranch ends in April, Slovenski said he plans to direct a summer camp. Thus far, he does not believe his time at the ranch has drastically changed his world perspective, but he did note that the job has “given me an appreciation for the toughness of physical labor.”

“My future job will be a little bit easier because I’ve done so much hard work here,” he said.

Despite the physical demands of the work, Slovenski said the ranch still introduced him to a variety of exciting “new outdoor things that I hadn’t really experienced” and explained that he considers the change in lifestyle more refreshing than jarring. One day, Slovenski recalled, when a quail flew into the window during dinner and died, “I feathered it, Clint gutted it, and we cooked it up in the frying pan that was still hot.”