Brown Penny

by William Butler Yeats

I WHISPERED, 'I am too young,'
And then, 'I am old enough';
Wherefore I threw a penny
To find out if I might love.
'Go and love, go and love, young man,
If the lady be young and fair.'
Ah, penny, brown penny, brown penny,
I am looped in the loops of her hair. 

O love is the crooked thing,
There is nobody wise enough
To find out all that is in it,
For he would be thinking of love
Till the stars had run away
And the shadows eaten the moon.
Ah, penny, brown penny, brown penny,
One cannot begin it too soon. 

 One of my favorite poems.

Grad School Politics

Politics suck.  I'm not talking about government politics here, either.  I'm talking about department politics.  Everyone holds some petty jealousy against everyone else in the department.  And when people in positions of power hold these jealousies, it can get ugly.  Very ugly.

And what better fire to ignite jealousy than money?  And in an academic department, how much money you have for research is everybody's business.  Everyone knows who has the funding.  And everyone is jealous of said person. 

So when the opportunity arose in my department to really piss off the guy with funding, everyone was on board.  In a civil society, they would have discussed taking away this professors lab space with him before any decision was made.  Instead, the decision was made with *no* input from the professor involved, and they waited two months after all the paperwork had been signed and stamped to tell him that he was losing his lab space.

And the worst part?  They lied about why they were taking the lab space.  

The reason they first cited: "This building was meant to be wet laboratory space, so we need to maximize its use and move anyone who does not need a high-tech facility with fume hoods."

The reason it eventually boiled down to: "We want space for this new distinguished professor and his graduate students to have nice offices."

So what does this mean for the professor who was evicted from his space?  Well, for one, he's really pissed off with the rest of the department.  And for another, his students are going to get crammed into a tiny room where they will barely be able to work.  Think about it: a whole group of stressed graduate students stepping on eachother's toes trying to get work done when all they can do is tell one another to move or stop making that noise...  It won't last long.

i'll be yours for a song

My favorite song, for so many reasons. I could listen to it over and over. It's "Kathleen" by Josh Ritter.

all the other girls here are stars—you are the Northern Lights
they try to shine in through your curtains—you’re too close and too bright
they try and they try but everything that they do
is the ghost of a trace of a pale imitation of you
I’ll be the one to drive you back home Kathleen
this party is made with the night air and the chance that a smile
will wind its way from your face to one of the boys in your line
you act like you’re hip to their tricks and you’re strong
but a virgin Wurlitzer heart never once had a song
I’ll be the one to drive you back home Kathleen
and I’ll have you back by break of day
I’m going your way anyway
and if you’d like to come along
I’ll be yours for a song
I know you are waiting and I know that it is not for me
but I’m here and I’m ready and I’ve saved you the passenger seat
I won’t be your last dance just your last goodnight
every heart is a package tangled up in knots someone else tied
I’ll be the one to drive you back home Kathleen
so crawl up your trellis and quietly back into your room
and I’ll coast down the length of your drive by the light of the moon
and the next time I see you—a new kind of hello
both our hearts have a secret only both of us know
‘bout the night that I drove you back home Kathleen

so this is grad school

It's not that different than what I was doing at Tech. The only difference right now is that I'm not doing research. But that will change soon. Oh, and another difference is that all my friends are 200 miles away.

post-field camp

Six weeks in Montana/Wyoming/Idaho with 30 geologists... I have to admit it was really intimidating at first, and I did not want to go (but when do I ever really start out wanting to go anywhere?), but now all I can think about is getting back. (Or just anywhere other than suburbia...)

I walked off the plane last night, and the thick, hot, humid air almost choked me. Add in the jet fuel fumes, and you've got a noxious concoction that would make anyone who's spent 6 weeks at elevation want to hurl. And the people... Even just sitting in the Denver airport, watching all these "normal" people was like watching a whole new species of human. And they smell funny too. But the thing that got me the most was the sheer number of people. It was really overwhelming. There had to be thousands of people just standing/sitting around in the airport terminal.

Enough of that. Field camp was a pretty awesome experience. We went to some pretty amazing places, and while some of them were a little crowded (ahem, Yellowstone), it was still an experience I wouldn't give up. The group we had was one of the best parts - it was such a diverse group, and everyone had something interesting to add to the group. And I may be the only one, but I really liked all of the mapping projects we did. I wish we had done more mapping (I might have been shot for saying that a week ago).

I don't really know what I want to do anymore now. Before, all I had really been exposed to was structural geology and geomorphology, and I really liked both of those, but now I'm curious about other things, like oil and economic geology, and I have no idea what I want to do anymore. The plan used to be to get my Ph.D. and teach, but now I'm not so sure. I know I'm definitely taking at least a year off of academia after I get my masters. I could see myself working for an oil company or a mining company in the future, maybe, possibly. Well I guess I have a little while to figure this out, or at least until summer internship applications for 2012 are due.

Now all I want to do is go camping and hiking... Some time soon I will put up pictures.

Symposiums and stuff...

So this past week was the Keck Geology Consortium Symposium in Schenectady, New York: one hundred undergraduate geology majors with posters and powerpoints to present to each other and their advisors. I was really happy to see my research group from Colorado again. It had been about 8 months since we had seen each other. The reunion was nice.

The symposium was at Union College. They planned a field trip for us on Friday. We saw some 10cm garnets, stromatolites, The Great Unconformity, and some other outcrops of rock in the southeastern Adirondacks. Upstate New York is very "cute." All the houses are cute (and huge). There was still some snow on the ground in some places - it was still quite cold there. (Really makes me glad I didn't opt to go to Vermont for grad school! I just can't handle that much snow.) On Saturday there were two 3-hour oral presentation sessions and two 1-hour poster presentation sessions. The large majority of presentations had to do with petrology and mineralogy, which are two things I know nothing about (well, not yet anyway). I feel like my presentations went well. They finished the day off with a cocktail hour and a formal dinner. It was a good experience and I feel better prepared for AGU or GSA conferences in the future.

So close, yet so far

Less than 4 weeks of school are left. This semester has been a whirlwind of research and projects and field trips. I can barely catch my breath.

I have finished my research from Colorado. I presented it at a poster session today, and I am also presenting it at the Keck Geology Symposium on April 15. The map is awesome (if I do say so myself) and the calculations, well, we made them work. But, it's complete. I just need to have my thesis revised and get two signatures, then I'm good to go.

I have accepted an offer to grad school. I'm pretty excited to work in an actual geology department where there are rocks everywhere. I also know which classes I'm taking in the fall: Tectonics and Mineralogy. The description of the tectonics course: "Evolution of Earth’s lithosphere in context of plate tectonics theory. Formation of continents through comparative anatomy of mountain belts, including Appalachians, Alps, Urals, Caledonians, Cordillera, Andes, and Himalayas." That sounds so awesome! Much better than the classes I have been forced to take at GT (specifically field methods and data analysis).

On that note... field methods is probably the most irrelevant class I've had to take. And it requires the most work. It's so biased towards water chemistry that it's almost impossible to create a project in anything else.

The curriculum of this department is poorly organized. Some classes are duplicates of others. Some classes are irrelevant to some students. Basic classes (such as mineralogy) are missing. There is no excuse for these faults. Well, they do give an excuse, but it is a poor one: "We don't want to compete with UGA." Honestly, what does competing with UGA have to do with the course offerings? If a course is useful to the students in the department, it should be offered. If the course is required by all other comparable curricula and departments, it should be offered.

Then they suggest that students take the courses they don't offer at GT at GSU, which, yes GSU is right down the street and it does offer the courses, but the logistics are just wrong. I looked into this. The courses I needed to take (sedimentology and mineralogy) all conflicted with the classes I needed to take here (which are irrelevant to my interests, but required for graduation). It was impossible.

So now, I will have to take remedial courses in grad school to catch up. And I'll have to wait another year to take the siliciclastic petrogenesis class that sounds cool (if they offer it next year).

Now I just need to go to the gym so I can get in shape for field camp. I'd like to not die when I get there. Here's a link to the field camp:

http://www.geology.siu.edu/courses/geol454/index.html