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

Making connections

I've been working on "networking" with geology professors at different grad schools recently. What an ordeal it is! Write an email, reread said email 15 times, attach super long CV, send, and wait for a reply. The waiting is the worst. Some professors reply the next day. Others, not so much. I've been waiting five days for one of them to reply. And I know he's in his office. I saw him give a presentation last week when I was in Colorado. Does it really take that much time and effort to say, "Hey, I got your email and will look at your CV when I have time." Or just cut to the chase, "Hey, I'm not accepting MS students right now." Just let me know something.

So, for those who don't reply to my emails, I'm going to take it a step further. I got the idea from one of the professor's websites. It said, "Please try good old U.S. mail if email isn't working!" So this is my plan. I will send them a letter in the mail. Hopefully, it won't get lost or ignored like an email might. I mean, they may get 3o emails a day, but only 2 or 3 letters a day. And soon, one of them will be from me.

the beginnings of a "thesis"

So for the past four days here, i have been doing roughly the same thing: surveying the stream in Gordon Gulch. So far, I have about 50 pages in my little notebook full of data points to graph, which will eventually end up being a map of the stream. Once i get this map, I then have to go survey both the north and south banks of the stream and draw out the terraces onto my map. Eventually, my project will end up being similar to this one, maybe a little less extensive:

http://www.azgs.az.gov/sanpedroriver2009.shtml

Obviously, these people had a lot more time and resources than I will, but it's roughly what I'd like to achieve. I (hopefully) only have one more day of surveying the stream, which means only one more day of wet shoes. I'll probably still have to fight the vegetation when I map the terraces, but that's okay. It's a whole lot easier than hiking up a mountain. I'll probably even end up coring trees, which means that I take out a small cylinder of the tree to count its rings to see how old it is. That way, we can know a minimum age for the terraces. We'll probably end up using radiocarbon dating to get a maximum age by dating some old logs that are buried in the terraces. I've probably been working the most out of everyone here, and probably still have the most to do. But that's okay with me. I'd rather work on my project than be someone else's assistant.