After high school, Shaara's work experiences resembled those of one of his favorite authors, Ernest Hemingway. Shaara served as a paratrooper for the 82nd Airborne Division, a merchant seaman, and police officer walking a beat. He married in 1950, graduated in 1951 from Rutgers University with a bachelor's degree and then did some graduate work at Columbia University and the University of Vermont. He spent the remainder of the 1950s working as a short story writer, predominantly in the science-fiction genre.
In 1961, Shaara accepted a position at Florida State University in Tallahassee, teaching creative writing and literature. It was probably a natural choice given his writing career, and he observed that he enjoyed teaching because "it taught him a lot." He worked hard at the challenge of reaching all of his students, describing the mix as "students with talent and no desire; desire and no talent; and a little of each." They responded by voting him Outstanding Teacher of the Year in 1967, earning him the Coyle Moore Award. He served there until 1973.
Michael Shaara wrote more than 75 short stories in his life. They were published in a variety of magazines, including Astounding Science Fiction, Galaxy, Playboy, Cosmopolitan, Redbook, and others. They covered a wide range of subjects, though the predominant one was science fiction.
