Sitting here in Zion National Park, one of the last spots I visited on my first geology field course, I feel like I'm coming full circle to some of the reasons that I'm still doing geology. (I also feel like I could receive wifi through my teeth. Twenty plus wifi points? Really?) Anyway, it's a perfect chance for me to answer Volcanista's question:
So July’s topic is about your inspiration to enter geosciences. Was it a fantastic mentor? Watching your geologist parents growing up? A great teacher, or an exciting intro field trip? How did it happen?
I first became interested in geology as a little kid - that rock and dinosaur phase that so many of us go through. Fortunately, living in the DC area meant that I could go see the Smithsonian Natural History Museum pretty much any time I wanted to, and I did. I remember my dad lifting me up over the rail so I could pet the fake tyrannosaur skull, and driving the video camera that looked in on the fossil prep lab, and peering at the fluorescent minerals in the gem and mineral exhibit. My parents let me dig giant holes in the backyard, and the one time I found a fossil (a shell mold), I remember asking if the Smithsonian might want it for their collection.
I pretty much knew I wanted to do geology all through primary and secondary school, and especially volcanology. Some Saturdays I would watch tapes of the old Planet Earth series (the one narrated by an Attenborough, not this Sigourney Weaver stuff they redid recently), and I would always skip to the plate tectonics and volcanoes episode. (Yes, I was pretty much an uber-geek from the start.) When I got to high school, the "geosystems" class was mostly meant for non-AP-track students, so I took AP Chemistry and, somehow, found out about a volunteer position at the Smithsonian instead, helping edit the Bulletin of the Global Volcanism Network . Two summers of that and I was hooked on volcanoes for good; I literally couldn't imagine having any career other than geology, and volcanoes were especially fascinating.
When I went looking at colleges, the geology program was a big factor, and I pretty much knew that I was going to go to William & Mary the moment I set foot on campus. When I started classes, I was so excited to be taking intro geology that I sat front and center the whole semester (although the instructor, who was a visiting prof, didn't even recognize me when I met him at GSA a year or so later). I was lucky enough that my freshman advisor turned into my permanent advisor, and that he took a chance on letting me into his Regional Field Geology course with nothing more than Intro and Historical Geology under my belt.
And that's how I ended up in Zion, and a lot of other places on and around the Colorado Plateau, after my freshman year. I didn't know much about minerals, or field mapping, or structures, or petrology, or pretty much anything at the start of that trip - but boy, did I learn. After three and a half weeks in the field I was pretty much hooked for life, even though I spent a good chunk of it being sweaty and tired and sleeping on rocks and generally being upset with my own lack of experience.
I was also hooked on the field work, which turned out to be a good thing - my senior research project, and some mapping I've been helping with the last couple of years, grew out of one stop on that first long field course. My advisor played a huge part (and I've written about it before), and the fact that he pushed me to work hard and take risks is one of the reasons I'm still in the field. It's invaluable to have someone who believes in you, after all. (He's also one of the reasons I became a better writer, and boy, has that paid off!)
I think the moment that I knew without a doubt that I wanted to be a volcanologist was when I scooped a blob of molten rock out of a Kilauea lava flow and watched it cool. My field notes for that hike say "BEST DAY EVER!" even though I know I was tired and hot and had a twisted ankle at the end of the hike. Handling the lava - seeing it up close for the first time - was just addictive, and every time I see a volcano I get the same sort of rush, to varying degrees.
So, I guess my answer is a mixture of things. I feel like to some extent the geology just got hardwired in there, although I have no idea how. But experiences and mentors were a huge part of it as well - and now that I'm in grad school for volcanology, and have even more great mentors to work with, I hope I'll want to stick with it for a long time to come.
A question recently came up at a social gathering about educators who were personally inspiring or changed the course of one's career. While awaiting my own turn to contribute to the discussion, I was struck by just how lucky I've been academically (I'll skip over non-academic inspiring people for now, although there have been quite a few). I've had a steady stream of wonderful, encouraging people guiding me from elementary school onward, and almost all of them (save for perhaps one or two that I didn't know particularly well, or only had for one class that I disliked for multiple reasons) have contributed in some positive way to the person I am now - academically or otherwise. I initially supplied an amusing anecdote about the third-grade teacher who introduced us to the GT program by making us wear broccoli necklaces for the first week of school. (I don't remember the exact purpose of this, other than some vague assumption that it was meant to help us develop thick skins and not worry about being "labeled" GT, but it certainly does stick in my memory. The teacher, by the way, was a great lady who I will forever be grateful to for getting me through the pain of learning long division.) But my serious response had to be that my undergraduate advisor has probably had the most impact in my academic journey. When I was first assigned to him as a freshman, I was frankly terrified of interacting with professors. I didn't know what to expect from a college setting, and I can conjure up a mental image of myself shaking in my shoes, overly formal, timid, etc etc. Because we didn't know each other well, our first meetings were mostly to iron out my schedule - I'd make suggestions for classes, he'd approve, and that would be it. (This is generally what freshman advisors end up doing, as I understand it, and that was fine.) But seeing as he was a geology prof and I wanted to be a major, he took a much greater interest in me than I'd expected. (This was probably a good thing, as my first geology class was taught by a visiting prof who I later found out was not enthusiastically received by either the upper-level students or the faculty.) The most important point of that freshman year was, I think, when he gave me an override to attend his 3 1/2 week summer field course. By the end of freshman year, I'd still only been able to take Intro Geo and Earth History, and I essentially knew nothing about mineralogy, structure, mapping, etc. I was the only freshman on the trip, and aside from enthusiasm my skill set was pretty sparse. And oh, did I struggle. The trip was a major crash course in mapping, mineral identification, navigation, structure, keeping a field book - everything. And there were times when I was so frustrated with my lack of ability that I wanted to cry - or kill my advisor, which he thankfully wasn't too offended at. But if I ever had any doubts that I wanted to be a geologist, they were gone within the first few days of that course. Wandering around the Colorado Plateau for nearly a month was one of the best experiences of my life, and one field trip stop actually led to my senior research and thesis. And - most important of all - I got to know my advisor not only as a professor but as a person. (There's nothing like having a snowball fight on the continental divide or getting tackled down a sand dune to break down social barriers.) And it kept going from there. I ended up taking many classes and field trips with my advisor, and working on his REU the summer of my senior year, and I can't say I've regretted any of it. There were still times that I wanted to throttle him, but I can sincerely say that any pain I suffered as his advisee was for my own good and ended up teaching me something important or useful, even if I couldn't see it clearly at the time. And it was his insistence that I do an honors thesis which led to the most exhilarating moment of my academic career and left me with a piece of work that I can proudly show to future employers and graduate committees, as well as a future of collaboration on a promising mapping project. I'm of course grateful to my other undergraduate professors, who were an extraordinary group of people and whose guidance and knowledge I am extremely fortunate to have received. But my advisor deserves a special place in my acknowledgements (although undoubtedly I will be fuming at him for something again before too long). Ah, love/hate relationships. In unrelated commentary, is it a natural state of affairs for there to be such polarization in regards to appropriate workplace temperatures? I've found that, where I work, one group would be perfectly happy to sit around with their windows open when it's below fifty outside, while the other group would prefer not to have to wear gloves and scarves inside the building. (I am firmly in the group who doesn't want the thermostat below 70. I like to be able to feel my extremities.) And, interestingly, the warm group tends to be women, while the cold group tends to be men. Is this a physiology thing, or a symptom of the fact that men are more likely to wear undershirts in addition to the whole suit and tie ensemble? Of course it would also help to have a functioning furnace, which I suspect is not the case at this point, as the little weather station outside my office has not changed from 68 degrees despite the fact that the thermostat in my office is cranked to 80.
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