Remember Those One Times When

Sometimes my brain gets random flashbacks to that one time when ___. It's easy to remember the big stuff, like graduation, field camp, E-Days, and spontaneous international trips. But it's fun to remember the little things, the random occurrences, and the normal everyday moments that defined those four years.

Remember? Those one times? When...

• When Emma hit a pigeon with her van
• Long summertime conversations with Elizabeth in Golden coffee shops
• Getting together in Green Center to study for a test and filling up all the white boards with concepts
• Driving through all the roudabouts on S Golden with Colton in shotgun going, "Weeeee!"
• When us seniors went to Snarfs and all ordered French Dips before the DigSig final
• Running up from Green Center basement to the kitchen to beat the grad students to the free food
• Post IV pie and skillets. Not being able to sleep after coffee.
• Standing in the cold in a field in Nowhere, CO waiting for the Northern Lights
• Studying in Higher Grounds till 7:30, moving to Starbucks until 9, and then heading to Woody's for college night
• Spring break junior year, when Nate evaded the cops
• Meeting at Higher Grounds with Rosie after the Structural final
• Choosing which snack you want from the Green Center vending machine because you've been in the building for 15 hours coding and don't have time to eat
• Techno kitten adventures
• Running with Rosie for the first time and not lasting 6 minutes
• Meeting up with Rima at the library and then venting over Sonic
• Spontaneous Sherpa excursions because the aroma was wafting towards campus
• Jam sessions
• Not having to ask Jayden where he wants to meet to eat (because Sherpa, obviously)
• Having to clean off the table at the Stoop before studying
• All the times Brandon drove me home from the stoop because I didn't have a car
• Having to knock to get into Brown because it's already 10PM and you've barely started studying
• Infinite cake, easy peasy lemon squeezy, and other Geophysics inside jokes
• Lon capa comments, and the legend of Mark Goldie
• Common hour tests, and the buzz about campus when they would go terribly
• Jayden's gross molasses thing
• Throwing socks in the Maple stairwell
• My two allnighters: Rebecca and Ethan, Rima and Brandon
• Moving Jayden out at the end of fall semester with Sara: vacuuming and moving his bed before check-out
• That one time in earth lab when that kid threw up.
• That one time Rebecca and I ended up in a game of shirts vs. skins of ultimate frisby after just throwing a frisby around alone on Kafadar one day
• Sitting in the middle of the hallway in Maple talking.
• Laine's big-a poster.
• Freshman pranks: stealing Brady's bed
• Brady and Brandon rearranging their room to forts.
• Late night convos with Sara in Maple 155A
• Goofing off in the study room on so called "study breaks"
• Brady's obsession with swag
• Walking into Jayden's room and plopping down on his futon with his fuzzy blankie
• Hanging out in Jayden's room while he reads off obscure internetness (i.e. Blucifer theories)
• Goldfish and fake tea
• Target runs with Sara while We Are Young played in the background

What a weird four years that I wouldn't trade for any other elements in the space-time continuum.

On Being a Mines Girl

This summer, I received an email from an incoming student asking about various things. One of these things was the ratio of female to male students at Mines, otherwise known as "The Ratio". 

Back in my day, (Fall 2011), the incoming freshman class had a 25% representation of women. This Fall, it is up to 31%. Bravo! I can't wait to read what it is in another four years. 

Since becoming a Mines Girl four years ago, I get some questions quite frequently, mostly in passing conversation. When I meet students from other universities, they sometimes have questions on "what it's like going to Mines". I reply that it's academically hard. They reply something like, "No, what's it like being a female at Mines?" I reply that it's academically hard. Wait, what?

But to answer the question, I loved being a member of the Mines community and culture. It's a very unique place, and I can understand that incoming students or friends and family of students may have a few questions. 

Such as...
Is living with The Ratio weird? Sometimes. Sometimes you'll be in a certain class (computer science courses are notorious) and realize you are one of three girls in the room among 30 guys, and it's kind of weird.

Most of the time it's only mildly weird and students will always point out the ratio: like when you go out for froyo with a group of friends and there is nearly half and half women to men, and everybody rejoices. I think that's kind of weird.

I was in a major with 40% girls, and also involved with clubs that are almost always of balanced gender. But even when in social situations where I was the only girl, I didn't really notice it. People are just people to me. But there will always be people who point out the ratio when you forgot it, and it just turns into a overused joke in my opinion. Some girls during their time at Mines feel like they need more interaction with females, so they join a sorority or something. But I never felt this way. 
 
Is the female population seen as a shortage, or as misplaced uncommon species? Yes and sometimes yes--mostly from a social standpoint. Mines guys, bless their hearts, are never going to be quiet about the Mines ratio and how they can't find a girlfriend. How girls are unicorns or other rare species. Or parking spaces. It gets annoying but everybody learns to deal with it. It also gets annoying when the Mines girls complain and over exaggerate on how desperate Mines guys are and how many offers of marriage they've gotten in the past day (slight hyperbole added). 
 
Do I ever feel people see me as less likely to be capable because of my gender? No, but yes. This is a pretty big issue in the sciences, but during my time at Mines, I never felt like a victim of sexism or degraded or thought less capable because of my gender. That said, it still happens many places, and sometimes it is more subtle than we realize. For example, a hypothetical professor might assume that his male student writes better code than female students. Or male students might unknowingly take the word of their male colleagues over female colleague's when asking for help on homework or something. Or in another scenario, women might tend to feel intimidated in class discussion or tend to let the guys handle the discussion and end up sabotaging ourselves in a form of imposter syndrome. These are all situations that probably happen often, but again very subtly. They are important to recognize and be aware of so we can all, both female and male, change the culture that is in STEM. 

I remember this one time in class sophomore year, one of my professors spent the entire lecture discussing the Imposter Syndrome with us. Our homework assignment was to write down a list of things we were good at. It was a pretty great day. Moments like these, combined with seminars by campus clubs made us aware and prepared us for potential obstacles for women in STEM. 
 
Overall, is the ratio an issue? No, it shouldn't be, and in a couple decades it won't be at all. But it still is a part of Mines' culture, for the better or worse.

Unfortunately some Mines guys will complain about how ugly Mines girls are (um sorry, but who has time to comb their hair?? If you look good, I will probably judge you), how mean and terrible they are, and how they use them for homework answers, and on and on. And us Mines girls have had the same complaints about the male population. The cliche's get thrown around until you're sick of hearing them (like "The odds are good, but the goods are odd"). And then you graduate. 

On a different note, the culture at Mines is such that I felt completely safe in Golden, even in the dead of night. Once time I woke up one morning to find a bike seat left in my car--a sort of reverse robbery--but that was about it. 

The bottom line is that in college, you learn to thrive in your environment, and create your own social circle. I'm proud to have been part of the tradition of women at Mines becoming helluva engineers. My fellow Lady Miners have been some of the strongest, hardest-working, most emotionally mature, and most brilliant people I've had the privilege of calling friends. And the same goes for my Mines guy friends who have been pretty awesome too. 

Going to a nerd school was kind of great. 

Mad Dreams

I woke up the other day from a geology dream where I was excited to bust out my hand lens and identify the grains in a rock. Some people like to call these nightmares or bad dreams, but since I'm a little crazy, I'll call them Mad Dreams: proof that attending Mines has ruined me. This post has taken me four years to write because every time I have a super nerdy dream, I try to write it down here.

I had another science dream last night. I woke up disturbed, not by the dream, but by the fact that I should really just finally publish this post. In my dream, I was at a Geophysics conference with my classmate Emily H. We had a big homework assignment due the next day, though, which consisted of taking partial derivatives of things that were in a three-by-three matrix. The conference was also an amusement park, and all our professors were there.

But let's start with my dreams from the beginning, all the way back from freshman year...

I had a dream that I was in Green Center 215 in Calc II. For some reason we were doing the test in class (tests for this class are done after class). I wrote my name and did one problem. I had to go get something, so I left the room and building and went to go get it. It ended up taking longer than I thought. I think I went to the grocery store to get some milk, and there was this big escalator in Brown Building run by UNC students. They dropped my gallon of milk and it splattered everywhere. I rode down the escalator and began to hurry to make my way back to the classroom, for my one and a half hours to finish the test were almost up. I got there just as it had ended, and my professor started talking about how disappointed she was in some people. I just stared at my empty test...but for some reason, someone else had written a bunch of stuff on it--maybe getting me partial credit, but no doubt they crossed the line of academic dishonesty. I was so sad and angry at myself for making me fail this test. Then I heard my real-life alarm clock ring, and still sleeping, I got excited. "Maybe this was all a dream and when I wake for for real, I'll get a chance to not fail my test!" I woke up. There was no test.

Even before college, I always used to have this dream. The dream that I couldn't find my classes on the first day of school. Before sophomore year, it happened again. I knew I had Introduction to Geophysics at 9, but that's it. I lost my schedule and slept in the first day of school. I was horrified. But there was free pie in the Maple Lobby, so it was okay.
I once dreamed I was a Geophysics and Geology double major. I woke up disturbed.

I was just informed of my score on the Physics free-response question. So that night, I dreamed of the possibilities of what the TAs marked me down on. I dreamed that they didn't like my drawing of a box. In real life, they liked my drawing of a dinosaur.

I had an Econ exam the Wednesday after Thanksgiving Break. So during the break one night a dreamed that it was late Tuesday night/early Wednesday morning and I had not studied for the Econ test and was certain to fail. It was horrible. In real life, it was also horrible.

On a Friday night, I had a dream that someone turned in a 19-page article for the Oredigger I had to edit. I thought to myself, "We can't print this", but still edited it. I had a hunch that the writer copied and pasted, or plainly downloaded the pdf from somewhere else. Either that or they were a huge nerd about the topic they were writing about.

The night after my Calc III final, I was still doing Calc in my dreams. There was a Stoke's Theorem problem, and I was finding the curl.

In the early weeks of my first summer internship, I had a dream that I was in a new room for a Geophysics class- my first one, so it must've been AEM- waiting for class to start, when I realized that I never bought new school supplies and had to use loose-leaf paper. Terry was disappointed in me.

The week after the first Dynamic Fields midterm, I dreamed that I got my test back and it had "90" written on the front. I knew I failed this test, so I was quite weirded out that I had scored so high. But upon further inspection, the 9 was actually a 4 because Andre's handwriting is so confusing. So it made more sense to me that I had gotten a 40. In real life, I got a 50.

I had a dream about fracking one night. I could see a 2D cross-section as it was happening.

At field camp, I would dream about being out in the field. Mostly doing mundane things, like walking the line taking magnetic measurements.

After the 2014 AGU Fall Meeting, where I orally presented my research that had to do with geomagnetic storms, I had a dream that I was back at the meeting, but this time had a poster presentation and was explaining my research to some famous scientist lady. I was pretty intimidated. In a sub-dream, I was in a city somewhere, and could see the northern lights.

I dreamed that Colton took over MIT's supercomputer. No big deal.

While I was a grader for Intro GravMag, I had a dream that I was a TA for field camp to help with processing GravMag, so only the second half of field camp. I knew that Michael should have been Field Camp Dictator because his reports were always great in GravMag. So I show up to CTLM and Michael is on the Gravity team. I was very disturbed, thinking that this shouldn't happen. Plus Michael told me the pair of students who were dictator, and that disturbed me even more. I told Michael my dream, and in real life he became Dictator a few months later.

I dreamed that I was looking out the one Green Center window, and a tornado was coming down. Mick was teaching in GC215 (maybe he was heading up a study session?), and announced that there was a fire. So there was a fire and tornado at the same time. Great.

During Spring Break senior year, in the midst of a monstrous assignment, I dreamed that I was working on my Inversion code in MATLAB. It didn't work.

My LAIS teacher didn't like my final presentation in my dream, and made me give another one. On a completely different topic, I think.

It might be a long time before I heal from the emotional damage caused by the process of obtaining a Mines degree. I will likely have similar dreams forever. But for now, I'm okay with that.

The Last Word, or Mines Quotes Part 4 of 4

This is another "4 of 4" post, which just means that I don't really know what to say. I think I've said it in my posts from previous years (Junior Year, Sophomore Year, and Freshman Year): yes, Mines kids (and profs) say funny things, especially when it is late and we are delirious. Yes, the GP lyfe and Mines life are interesting lives to lead and would make for an interesting sitcom. But I think what I said freshman year really captures when I'm trying to say: That I think you all are awesome and that I know I couldn't have made it out of Mines without my Mines Kids.

Senior year was special, I have to admit. First, people everywhere started asking us questions like:
"How's Senior Design going?"
"Are you excited to graduate?"
"Do you have a job?"
"Do you have every aspect of the next 50 years of your life figured out?"

So thank you, fellow seniors, for sharing in the inside joke that the only logical answer to these and other questions are to look at another senior and start laughing. Or crying. Mostly crying.

Senior year was also special because we knew we didn't have to figure out the little stuff like we did the first few years. By this time, we knew school was hard, but we knew we could make it. Probably. We knew who our classmates were and what our professors might be like. I accepted that I would procrastinate everything and didn't lie to myself otherwise, yet still lamented against myself when everything was due. We realized that there were a lot more important things than homework. And we had our friends and knew who we wanted to spend our last semesters with. Okay, maybe that's not necessarily little stuff. But anyway.

Here are quotes from some of the cast of characters from my senior year, and as you will see, their quotes range on the spectrum of profound wisdom to moments of nerdy laughter. As a sidenote, each set of quote posts since sophomore year has contained at least one Pokemon reference. Never change, Mines.

***
"I'm a senior. I shouldn't have to go to class." ~ Jake

"I have to go do homework. Well, is Senior Design really considered homework or torture?" ~ Antonia

"It's so boring. I'd rather fail the class than listen to lecture." ~ Eric, on Thermo 209

"It looks like 4 questions, but it's really 40 questions." ~ Rachel, on Jeff homework assignments

"It's a lot cooler to know the Creator of the stuff rather than just the stuff." ~ Michael

"I think free food is a symbol of salvation. Like, we didn't do anything to deserve it. But it's there for the taking." ~ Craig

"The best free food is stolen." ~ Colton

"I wish the library allowed food. And by allowed food, I mean sold food. I don't understand why they don't allow food, because no one reads the books." ~ Rima

"I thought that was a box of donuts but I was so confused because the box said Reservoir Fluid Properties." ~ Amanda, on Ganaa's binder

"Let's put a unit impulse in this jelly bean system." ~ Sean

"I must sleep. It is my time. Farewell. ...That sounds like a suicide note, but you should know that I just ordered an ice cream maker, so I have a lot to live for." ~ Jayden

Colton, looking for a laptop: "I need Windows."
Me: "Story of our lives." (because Green Center has no windows)

"I want to say spiked my interest, but spike makes me think of a Green's function." ~ Elizabeth, on writing to professors for grad school

Krista: "So whether you're getting married, or going to grad school..."
Me: "Yeah, there were two choices. No one wanted to marry me, so I thought, 'Better apply to grad school.'"

"I saw you meeting new people, and I thought, 'I'm glad that's not me meeting new people.'" ~ Andy

"I have a bunch of friends. I see them every day in class." ~ Jake

"Computers aren't your friends. You have to beat the computer into submission." ~ Colton

"He's an abuser. He treats his computers like he treats his coffee." ~ CompScis in Higher Grounds, on one of their professors.

Sean: "Austin, what is geophysics?"
Austin: "Geophysics is when you bang your head against the ground [demonstrates]... and send an impulse through it...and then listen for the echo."

"I miss studying for tests." ~ Rosie, on the torture of Inversion homework

"Huygens..Fermat...meh, I don't know, I'm more of a Maxwell guy." ~ Joseph, on Seismic vs Potential Fields

"We're the three slacketeers!" ~ Rachel

Me: "Why are we so smart?"
"Because we're geophysicists."
Shane: "I think we're just not dumb. There's a difference."

"Guys we're the most attractive department at this school." ~Nik

While studying for Stratigraphy:
Emily: "What does 'coarse with some fine sediments' mean?"
Shane: "Like when a girl tells you she's fine.."
Chloe: "...She's not fine."

Craig: "The arabian peninsula is its own plate..."
Jace: "I was never good with geometry."

"Holy geology, Batman!" ~ Roy

In regards to becoming co-department head of Geophysics:
Tyrel: "When you become an admin or department head, everyone hates you. Even your professors."
Me: "Not Terry!"
Colton: "Terry still teaches. That might be why."
Me: "We can teach. You'll teach Java and I'll teach EPICS."
Colton: "Okay, perfect. You'll teach them MATLAB and I'll teach them (real) programming."

"I've slept so much lately...all that's left for me to become a Snorlax is to grow fur and start blocking people's paths." ~ Antonia, after school was over

Professor quotes:
"I was very forgiving in my grading...it was sunny and I was happy." ~ Andreas

"Keep this handy. It's not in the book, but I thought it was kind of cute." ~ Andreas

"Jeff is the fountain of all knowledge, as we know." ~ Ed

"I will continue to call is aluminium, I'm sorry. It's such a corruption of our language." Ed, on aluminum and English

"This is a Science paper. Which doesn't necessarily mean it's correct. But it's sexy." ~ Ed

"If you guys hate trigonometry, I have bad news for you. I kind of like trigonometry." ~ Paul

"When you start forgetting things, forget this last." ~ Paul, on something I already forgot

"I'll probably use them inconsistently myself." ~ Warren, on geology terms

"Back to my favorite villains, the modelers..." ~ Warren

"There is.. stuff in the solar system." ~ Jeff

"The rich get richer, and the poor form a thin veneer on the rich." ~ Jeff, on the accretionary stage of planetary formation

"You guys are all lithophiles because you're geophysicists." ~ Jeff

"In (Continuum Mechanics class) I told you all that this happened and you believed me like suckers." ~ Jeff

"I don't publish it, and no one else has either, so consider it fiction." ~ Jeff

"Science is like skiing – you have to be willing to fall if you ever hope to do anything great." ~ Jeff

Me: "Who would the bizzaro Jeff be?"
Jeff: "Dave Hale. Haha just kidding."

"I don't know if there's an easy degree program at Mines, but Geophysics definitely isn't it." ~ Dave Hale

"Woody Allen said half of life is showing up. Well, 10% of life is showing up." Dave, on attendance

"The passive voice is not liked by me very much." ~ Roel

"I expect you to write that. Treat me like an imbecile." ~ Prof. Martin

"As long as you keep your wits about you, it will be fine." ~ Prof. Martin

Five Eight Fifteen

Now a grizzled alumna, I can look back over my entire undergrad career and point at things that were awesome and things that were hard and things that I regret. My biggest regret of my four years at this school was straightening my hair the night before May 8, 2015.

The day before graduation was like any other day when one finishes their undergrad degree. You know, cramming for a seismology final in the library a half hour before it starts with a couple classmates. Celebrating with Cheesecake Factory leftovers afterwards while watching Netflix. And ending with dinner with old friends.

Ethan and I talked while Rebecca went to get something. Ethan, who had graduated last May, reminisced with me on the hard times at Mines.

"I'm so glad I don't go to that school any more," he sighed.
"Yeah," I said. Then I remembered I was done, and smiled. "Me too."

Rebecca and I remembered that we would have to wake up early the next day. Ughh. So I went home, straightened my hair, and eventually went to bed.

The countdowns on my phone were freaking out when I woke up at 7:15. Five eight fifteen. The day we had been waiting for. The day that would be a blur.

Rachel asked me when I was getting to campus. "Well I just woke up. So...7:45?" I hung my cords and stuff over my neck, hid my fanny pack under my flappy black gown, put on my wool socks and boots, and headed over. My fanny pack proved to be quite handy, filled with water for dehydrated and hungover friends, chapstick, glasses cleaner, and my phone to take pictures with.

I remember chaos. I remember being herded around like cattle. It was weird and cool seeing the class of 2015 all together in one room. Also overwhelming. I found my GP (geophysics) peeps before walking off to Kafadar to hand my parents my camera and coat. I didn't need my coat anymore because I found some ponchos. I should have grabbed 30--one for each GP kid--but only grabbed a couple.

I remember frantically calling a couple of my friends on the phone while Dawn rounded us up for the GP group pic. I remember handing Austin my extra poncho. I remember someone over the speaker system calling for various names that didn't make it to check-in. I remember trying to find my number on the floor which determined the order in which we walked out. It was very confusing because some of the GP kids were a few rows away. It just so happened I got to stand by Brady, my old friend from freshman year. (Big gulps, huh?)

Finally they herded us outside over the soggy grass down the soggy street. And that's when the Class of 2015's worst hairday started.

There is no other way to describe those three hours than "The Worst". Or maybe "The best of times; the worst of times". A fitting end to our undergraduate journey.

Our major was one of the last to walk in to the fenced-in region on the commons. While waiting, Rich, our GravMag professor, came by to say hi and tease that he shouldn't have never let us graduate while offering his umbrella. If we had failed GravMag, we probably wouldn't have been in that soggy ceremony. Oh well. We went to go sit down in our seats and I tried to get rid of the puddle before the president made us sit down in it.

The rest is blur, but I remember terrible speeches ("blah blah blah horizontal drilling...blah blah blah energy independence" and other non-motivating, non-inspirational buzzwords), soaked hair and fogged up glasses, turning back to look at Rachel whenever something in the ceremony annoyed me, putting my poncho on before the MechEs started to walk, forgetting to change my tassel until Chloe reminded me, the rainwater making a waterfall on the canopy for people to walk under, people losing their graduation hats, said graduation hats becoming flimsy, and wanting the whole ordeal to be over quickly. I barely remember walking across the stage, and remember that we were being rushed and didn't get to shake Terry's hand. I remember Dave Hale proudly smiling us on from the faculty section though, and waving to me right before we walked. When it was the grad students' turn, I remember our GP section cheering for our TAs graduating with master's degrees. And I remember everybody cheering so hard when the very last person had walked across the stage. The best part of the ceremony was when it had ended.

This is where I'm supposed to wax sentimental about how all the best parts of Mines were scattered in those four years and how getting a degree to hang on the wall from Mines is alright, but there were so many other intangible things that we don't get diplomas for that were even more valuable.
But let's save that for another post.

A Haiku About My Life

caffeine to wake up
school school school school food school school
yay melatonin

30 Days

This post will be updated...maybe not every day, but it will be updated. 

08/Apr/2015 | 30 days left

Remember when there were 880 days (or so) left until Graduation? I do, because that's about when I added the countdown. Shane kept asking me the days until the end of Sophomore year and until graduation, so the countdown was born. Now it's 30.

Today I signed up for my Senior Design final presentation. E-Days starts tomorrow. There's too much stuff that needs to get done, all within 30 days, most way less than that. My goal is to not die.

Excitement level: minimal. I'm trying to minimize the objective function that is my emotions right now. Bleh.

17/Apr/2015 | 21 Days left
This week was definitely the most stressful week of the semester. So many things piling on...
One bright spot was our annual Department Banquet on Thursday. Having attended Banquet the past four years (since I was a sophomore), it felt surreal to be one of the Seniors giving gifts to the professors.

But the adventure started after the Banquet.

The banquet was held on top of Lookout and I was helping out Austin, SSG prez, with stuff. The roads were fine going up. The snow had picked up a lot during the banquet. We were the last to leave, naturally. We were going to follow a car with Dawn and Dave and go down the I-70 way.  But on the first turn, Austin's Jeep gets stuck in the snow

Dawn and Dave don't see us lag behind and keep driving onwards, leaving us for dead! So Austin is like, ok, I'll back up until I can find a less steep gradient/get traction (he has rear wheel drive). He slides onto the incoming traffic lane until we are dangerously close to the left edge of the road--there is no guardrail and our death (well, not quite our death) would meet us mere inches away.

His phone is dead. I'm at 9%. Service is spotty. 

I call the Treasurer. No answer.

I call the VP. No answer.

Then I call Rosie because I know she has all-wheel-drive. In the meantime, we use my remaining phone battery to call AAA. They say they'll send a tow truck within the hour.

While waiting for Rosie, three cars drive by and ignore us. A plow asks how we are. Thanks, plow guy. 

Anyway Rosie and Stefan take me down the mountain, and so I charge my phone. Rosie gave her charger cord to Austin, so I could call him. The tow truck company calls and says he's about to head up Lookout, so should be there soon. I say great, and call Austin and say it'll be about 30min. About 35 min later, Austin callls me.

"Uhh, so I know I keep saying this, but there's been an interesting development. A car just stopped by and said that they saw a tow truck that had just slid and crashed off the side of the road."

He calls AAA again, and sure enough, that was supposed to be the truck to pick him up. At this point, I'm extremely tired but laughing because this is too ridiculous. So Austin calls for a ride and gets off the mountain at like 1AM finally. What a crazy night. And of course, it was stuck in the snow when we went up the mountain to get it the next day. So we had to dig it out before some people came and helped push the car out of the snow. 

All this plus a normal week's workload of insanity.

24/Apr/2015 | 14 Days left
Lying on the floor, I didn't know what to do. My slice of greasy pizza lay next to me face-down, making the ground slippery for the next person to fall down the stairs, and my phone got thrown across the stairwell. Should I cry?

Almost anything had seemed to make me cry this past month, my stressed emotions like a stressed fault, ready to slip. But I didn't feel like crying now, oddly enough. So I moaned instead, and writhed on the floor for a little while because the cold tile felt good on my swelling ankle.

A sophomore walked into the stairwell.

"Are you okay?"

"Um...I don't know. Sorry, let me get my pizza out of the way for you."

"Uh, should I call for help?"

"Some ice would be nice."

My poor pizza. I had only taken a couple bites out of it. I was late to lab because I had to stand in line for it. At least it was free.

Someone who knew first aid came and helped me get to lab. She asked how many stairs I fell down. I didn't know. Two, maybe? How did this happen? I don't know.

She got me ice and the sophomore threw my pizza away, since it was ruined.
That's the real tragedy here.

I hobbled to Higher Grounds a few hours later to drown my pain in coffee and conversation. While I told this story to Antonia, the poetry teacher sympathizes with me and my tragic day.

"You should write a poem about it."

This story will have to do.

How to Find a Grad School #2: What to do before applying

Juniors and underclassmen keep asking me, "When should I apply to grad school?" The short answer is that the deadlines for grad school are around December of senior year. But the real answer is that the process could start at the end of Junior year. So assuming you want to apply to grad school in 9 months, here's my advice for you.

1. Figure out where you don't want to go / live, as I wrote in #1. 
2. This might be point 0, but figure out what sort of field you want to go into...kinda important. 
3. Make a huge list of places from point 2. 
4. Sign up to take the GRE in the summer (you really don't want to take this during school).
5. Download the practice test software from ETS to study for the GRE. Study...a little bit. Focus on quant, and especially not running out of time on quant.  Worst case scenario, if you fail the GRE, you could still apply to schools outside the US (you won't fail though, right?). Uh, but take the GRE seriously. It's too expensive to retake, let's be honest. 
6. As the summer goes on, look at the departments and the research being done. Once settled on a subfield of research, read the prof's websites and look at the papers to see what kind of research they do. Can you imagine doing that sort of research? Good. 
7. Add potential supervisors to a list. This should be a sort of short list (less than 10?)
8. Update your CV. 
9. Begin drafting and sending the Inquiry Email to these professors that you would like to work with. This is a very important part of the whole process! This should ideally happen late August to early October. In November, profs get a lot of these emails because students realize the deadline to apply is in Dec and they need to find a supervisor! (Some schools work differently, but for the most part, it's good to reach out to show interest, inquire about funding, and find out about the research opportunities).
   Here is a good resource on how to do this:
   Post 1
   Post 2
   Make sure your email seems like you are a focused individual. Avoid typos (don't be me). You can attach your CV. Or if that makes you feel weird, you can wait until they reply back and ask for your CV. So it's good that you have that ready. 
10. Ask people for letters of rec in advance -- give them a heads-up and tell them when the deadline is, because some of them like to procrastinate like us. 
11. Continue inquiry emails and the stuff that goes along with them. There are a few outcomes. Either they:
    -won't reply (*crickets*...don't feel bad though)
    -will reply saying that they can't take another student
    -will reply saying they might/will be taking a new student
    -will reply asking if you're available to talk on the phone or Skype. You're available, of course.
    There are a few variations, of course...sometimes students are the ones to initiate a Skype meeting, which is cool if the prof is not busy.   
12. If you get a Skype meeting set up, treat it like an interview: but that you're interviewing them, too. Come prepared to talk about your experiences and prepared with a list of questions you have about research, the school, or application process. Don't ask all your questions during your Skype meeting though. It's good to save a question or two to send a month or so later to show that you're still intersted. Send a follow-up email a day after the meeting. 
13. If you are still interested, get ready to actually apply to the school. Whoa. 
14. But not without seeing how many windows per capita the department building has. 

There was only slight sarcasm in this post. It is mostly serious. Actually, all of it was serious except point 14. 

Fluid Mechanics

Deposition and erosion. Everything is deposition and erosion. Mountains climbing higher and higher, being scraped of their skin by water and ice. Sediments are carried for miles and miles, leaving only the strongest bits.

Everything is stress and strain. Even deposition and erosion. Life piles on more and more layers and sheets of paper with lists of things to do. What is the failing point? Like caramel stretches farther and farther until it breaks. Like an abused rock cracks after being squeezed so much. Deformation is caused by stress and strain. The heart beats. Extension and compression.

A pebble becomes entrained and makes a great journey downstream. Fluid mechanics.Weaving through a crowd of students. Mist crawls over the mountains signaling that it's a good day to sit and drink a cup of coffee.

Heat flow controls everything. Stress and strain. Deposition and Erosion. The transformation of a cake from goo to deliciousness. Mmm...remember infinite cake?

Dispersion and propagation can describe anything. Heat flow is dispersion. Light propagates. Waves of sea water crash onto the rock face. Erosion.

Yet timing is everything.

I realize this more so than ever. There is an hour glass of pitch and an hour glass of very fine sand that were turned over at the same time. Time crawls but is escaping way too quickly.

2014 Was Weird

But weird in a cool way. As I begin my last semester, I can't imagine what 2015 might hold. Funny though: even when you think you know the storyline there are unexpected things that happen. Here are 2014 things that happened in my year:

Went to four time zones*
Helped build an android app
Commuted across state lines every day
Celebrated Tesla's birthday
Gave a talk at one of the biggest geoscience conference in the world
Spent more on coffee than food...probably
Helped start a club on campus
Gained more elevation than a popular 14'er in four hours*
Spent more money on Red Sox tickets than Rockies tickets*
Got chosen by the Grav Lyfe*...multiple times
Decided what I want to do with the next part of my life
Traveled out of the country for the first time
Applied to grad school
Became able to run for ten straight minutes
Started a band that has fans
Drove a vibroseis truck
Started learning Dutch
Drove 85 in a 55
Drove 100 in  a 75
Traveled to eight states*
Had six flights
Learned about magnetotellurics, exponential filters, total electron content, and the method of Frobenius, and many other things
Watched two lunar eclipses...well, one. Does working in Eclipse count?
Fell in love with Maine black bear ice cream, poutine, and london fogs
Saw fireflies for the first time


*:

- I had a layover in Chicago. So that counts. But not as a state visited.
- Mount Yamnuska in Alberta has more elevation gain (base to peak) than Mount Bierstadt.
- I payed ~$35 for a Red Sox vs. Cubs ticket at Fenway Park. I went to two Rockies games all season, both in April, which cost me $20.
- Remember: we don't choose the Grav Lyfe, the Grav Lyfe chooses us.
- My layover in Chicago doesn't count.

Pressure Gradients and Uncertainty

Lately, I've been losing sleep. Part of it is Nyquil withdrawal. I was sick for two weeks straight (since Thanksgiving week), so I was on Nyquil cough syrup for those same two weeks so the cough attacks would have a less chance of shaking me from my sleep. Unfortunately for my sleep schedule, the end of the semester also coincides with me pumping caffeine into my blood system.

The other part of it are the things that take up my thoughts. Thoughts of mostly uncertainty in data analysis and uncertainty in life. At least the semester is almost over.

Oh. The semester is almost over.

The M on Mount Zion in Golden has a countdown each semester to the number of days until graduation for the last nine days. We've now seen it seven times.

"Look at the M. Next time it will be for us."

***

A rallying cry for the Geophysics Junior's hardest class that we Seniors stumbled into

It is during the last ten minutes of a last final of the week that one probably is the most unmotivated. I was particularly unmotivated during this semester's last one, for it was an open computer final and had concepts that contradicted fundamentals from the final I just took an hour earlier.

Plus my hand hurt from writing so much. Even though I stayed up until 2AM studying on accident, I wasn't stressed out about finals. I have done it so many times by now. I was more stressed out about getting my talk finished and everything else. After Tuesday...I would be relaxed.

***

The semester is now over, and the tail end of the year quickly following after it. My sources of December stress are resolved, but uncertainty carries into 2015.

The year I graduate college. The year I start grad school...somewhere.

I was able to reset my sleeping schedule at the AGU Fall Meeting, ironically. Usually people don't get much sleep at giant earth science conferences, but the first two days had me waking up at 6:30AM to prepare for my talk, which was on Tuesday afternoon.

This AGU Fall Meeting was my second, but already was very different from my first, when I was overwhelmed by the bigness of geoscience and taking in the amazing facets of our field of study. This year, my Fall Meeting was defined by prep for my talk and networking. And sushi. I ate sushi twice. (Can I just say how much I love that NSF supports my caffeine and food habit?)

Networking is actually cool because these are my kind of nerds: from people who sing and write poems about geoscience to people who I might be working with in the future. My week was also busy catching up with multiple circles of friends that converged at AGU: Mines Geophysics peeps, 2014 REU friends, and 2013 REU friends. 

My talk went well, and though it was a lot of pressure, it was a huge honor and actually a lot of fun to give. I ended up being up a lot less nervous than I expected it being my first AGU talk. Probably because I was singing in my head the entire talk before mine.

"Ain't no mountain high enough..."

***

It's my last trip of the year. From my first trip of driving through the Arizona desert during Spring Break and receiving the email that I was accepted to the Haystack REU, to the drive to Field Camp, DEN to BOS, BOS to SEA, SEA to BOS, BOS to YYC, driving back from Calgary, DEN to SFO, SFO to DEN.

What's next?

I can't begin to think about going back to school right now and starting my final semester at Mines and all the uncertainty beyond that. I just want to stare at geology from thirty thousand miles above the ground.

The Sierra Nevadas

Where Chalk-White Arrows Go

“There is a place where the sidewalk ends
And before the street begins,
And there the grass grows soft and white,
And there the sun burns crimson bright,
And there the moon-bird rests from his flight
To cool in the peppermint wind.

Let us leave this place where the smoke blows black
And the dark street winds and bends.
Past the pits where the asphalt flowers grow
We shall walk with a walk that is measured and slow,
And watch where the chalk-white arrows go
To the place where the sidewalk ends.

Yes we'll walk with a walk that is measured and slow,
And we'll go where the chalk-white arrows go,
For the children, they mark, and the children, they know
The place where the sidewalk ends.”

― Shel Silverstein, Where the Sidewalk Ends


My high school graduation speech was titled "Where the Sidewalk Begins", inspired by my kindergarten days of listening to "Where the Sidewalk Ends". I stood up there, ready to end high school and take on college, not fully comprehending the sheer stress (pun intended) and challenges and sheer joy of experiences that were ahead. I began:

The path of our education has led up to this day.
That path might have been bumpy, winding, or a joyous ride, but I know it was very long.
Yet, as weary as the walk might have been, here we stand.
We made it.
...
Now we are ready to look both ways,
cross to the other side of the street,
and go make prints in the wet cement with our bare feet.

This is where sidewalk begins.

It's so cheesy...I know. It's even more cheesy now that I laugh at my high school self who hadn't a clear picture of what bumpy, winding, and weary meant. Or even joyous. But if I thought graduating high school was where the sidewalk began, does that mean college is where it ends?

Silverstein seems to think that it is not so. Or does he?

Colorado School of Mines has been the place where the grass grows soft and white. It has also been the place where the smoke blows black and the dark street winds and bends.

Maybe this is before the street begins? And when did my life take on so many road, path, street, or sidewalk metaphors?

Funny...in college I stopped looking both ways before crossing streets and also started jaywalking across them. And some of my favorite times in Golden have been walking with a walk that is measured and slow in the middle of the campus streets in the late hours of the night when no one else is awake and around to crash their car into me. 

What does that have to do with life and paths? 

I don't know. I'm just going to miss it.

Dear Older Self

Dear Older Self,

What's the future like? Did I make the right choices about the future? So how 'bout that grad school thing, huh? What about the non-school stuff? What about spending senior year well? How did that go? What should I do better? What should I do?

Did I make the bright-eyed freshman proud?

So many questions...sorry.

Best regards,

Your senior self

Four of Four

I look up from my phone. There’s a British man scribbling in chalk at the bottom of the  auditorium, pushing Fourier transforms into our reluctant brains, which are mushy from waking up a mere  ten minutes beforehand. I am utterly bored, for I already have learned to make functions as a product of sines and cosines the year before. My brain turns off. I try to turn it back on. It turns off again. I turn it on. It wanders…

I can’t do this.

The southwest stairwell of the Green Center fills with the echoes of my sandals climbing the ugly stairs. So many times I have climbed those same stairs up. Year One, for freshman Calculus. Year Two, for field theory. Year Three, for everything geophysically imaginable. And now, Year Four. For the end.

The days and nights spent in the Green Center blend together now. So many times I have climbed not knowing when I’d see the light of day again. So many descents after those long hours, with my brain relieved, tired, or both, my eyes tired from squinting at my code, laughing, or both.

These years have been piecewise continuous. Each has its own flavor. The setting is mostly the same, the cast of characters slightly adjusting with time, but the story has only one more chapter left to be written.

Chapter Four of four.

The room on the northwest corner and second floor of the Green Center is frigid.  The geophysics seniors have gathered there for guidance on the capstone of our undergraduate career: senior design. “This course is filled with pitfalls,” our professor and department head begins.

I can’t do this.

But after we walk out of the frigid room, maybe we feel slightly more prepared for the future. Or at least senior design.

Still, the future seems like a cold and scary place, and sometimes I’d much rather stay in my bed than travel towards it. But then the future nudges me, “Hey, it’s time to wake up and get dressed. You should probably read those scientific papers for senior design. And put together a spreadsheet of potential grad school advisors.”

I can’t be a senior. I still sleep in a bunk bed. And to think next year I’ll be a grad student?

My eyes are still blurry as I stare at errors in my code at the Linux Lab. Indices are funny things, my coffee-deprived brain remembers.

Chapter 0 of N. Where N is the number of years I am in grad school and is equal to about five or six. Or possibly more. I don’t know the setting or the cast of characters. But Chapter 0—the searching and application process—has me excited.

Chapter Four of four.

They overlap. One story wraps up, another waits to begin, despite my simultaneous resentment and welcoming of it all. 

The Pre-Senior Year Paradox

I want to graduate. Right now.

I miss people.
I miss Golden.
I want senior year to start.
I miss my favorite restaurants.
I don't want the summer to end.
I'm excited to think about grad school.
I'm not excited to write grad school apps.
I don't want to think about doing homework.
I can't wait to have more adventures.
I think the future is overwhelming.
I don't want things to change.
I don't want to leave.
I'll miss Golden.
I'll miss people.

I don't want to graduate. Ever.

How to Find a Grad School #1: Where I DON'T want to go

There are many different factors that one must consider when searching for graduate school to apply to, but when it comes down to it, there are many good schools all across the globe. How to narrow it down? Start crossing entire regions off the list.

I've lived in Colorado my whole life. Colorado is probably the best place in the world, let's just face it. The climate is nearly perfect, although its bipolarness, no tripolarness is annoying. Spoiled in this lovely region, there are some places I cannot bear to live in for two to six years (depending on if I stay for my PhD). Thus began my search.

I hate humidity. And heat. And extreme cold. I don't really want to leave the continent. That left nowhere. But I narrowed it down to this:

So I'm getting somewhere. (Just kidding: I have a list, don't worry, and will probably have a spreadsheet soon). But none of these places are perfect, of course: my short stint in the Northeast thus far is showing me how humid is too humid, and how my hair might be unhappy there. Winters there also suck more than Colorado winters. So my red region might even be shrinking more. But everything is a compromise, right?

Next in How to Find a Grad School, I'll look at schools based on the number of windows in their earth science buildings. You know, the important stuff. 

Note: The posts in this series contain an undisclosed percentage of sarcasm. 

Stuff Mines People Say, v3.1: Now with even more Geophysics flavor!

Catastrophic loss of credit!! Donuts. Tests that took up two classes. Skipping Structural to go to Chick-fil-a. Writing "I'm sorry :(" on the front of a test. You know, normal things in the GP lyfe (geophysics life, for those who don't understand) and Mines life.

In the craziness of rushing from the end of the semester, to field camp, then straight to internships, I almost overlooked at how great of a year Junior Year was. I never want to do it again, and thankfully I don't have to, but there were some crazy, dorky, difficult, fun, and all-around good times spent with both new and old friends.

So without further rambling on the nerdiness and hilarity of Mines kids (and professors), here are Junior Year's quotes. These also include some from Field Camp. There aren't many from second semester...I think I was having too much fun, or got Junioritis or something, so I'm sure I missed some gems that I didn't save. (Sophomore and Freshman Year's are linked for nostalgia's sake.)

***

"I hate boys. I hate Dynamic Fields." ~ Rosie

"I want to get a telescope lens and take pictures of people who are at the top and then run up and meet them with prints." ~ Jayden, on hikers on South Table

"Sometimes I think life would be easier as a MechE." ~ Rima

"Storm's taking a procrastishower real quick." ~ Shane

Cashier at Snarf's: "Do you have your CSM student ID?"
Me: "Not on me, but I do have the emotional scars."

"I call him the gravity whisperer....[whispers] because he talks like this..." ~ Shane, on Rich, our gravity prof.

"If I would've taken this class in 4th grade I would've gotten an A in this class." ~ Shane

Me: "Why are you ramped up?"
Shane: "Because of Field Methods...that class sucks."
Me: "But it's not even Thursday yet..."
Shane: "But it will be...eventually."

"There are two kinds of fedora: real fedora and CompSci fedora." ~ Laine

Rosie: "I bet if you polled the school, the majority of them would say they like hockey."
Shane: "I bet if you polled the school, the majority of them would say they like baseball."
Brandon: "If you polled the school, they would say they watch Pokemon."

"Without me, we wouldn't have made it this far in college. Well, I wouldn't have made it this far without me. True story." ~ Shane

"Anna was almost our 29th electrode." ~ Joey, after Anna almost touched an electrode during a DC survey in GPGN303

"If I got a B in AEM, I would punch myself in the face." ~ Shane

"What happens in the Linux Lab stays in the Linux Lab." ~ Stephen and Colton

"And that is why we are esteemed geophysicists. We are not limited by that thing known as reality." ~ Stephen, on geology

"The great thing about Structural is that it's worth just as much credit hours as Continuum." ~ Bradley, because Structural Geology was easy and Continuum was NOT

"I was actually really productive today. Probably because all my homework was due." ~ Emily

Nik, on the Continuum Mechanics final: "There was a little k, and kappa, and a big K. You can't have three k's in a problem!!"
Jennifer: "Yeah, that's just racist!" 

"What's a Green's Function?" ~ All of us Juniors, all the time

Professor quotes:

"You guys have seen this notation before...probably." ~ Jeff

"Do you know what a SWAG is?" ~ Terry

"That is one crunchy potato chip...You could just let it soak in your mouth a while." ~ Switzer, to a kid eating chips in ProbStats

Student: "On the test, are there points for a picture?" 

Switzer: "No. A picture should be reward in itself."

"Oil is a metamorphic rock derived from the primary rock, dinosaurs." ~ Jeff

"This is basically Maxwell's 5th equation. Don't quote me on that...actually, no one would ever, ever say that." ~ Andrei

"Can anyone tell me what isopach means? Iso...pach..Iso...Iso...Iso...pach...pach [waving hands] Pach... Pachy...Pachyderm.. Iso…pach ...?" ~ Dr. Bob

Random quotes from field camp:
"In the beginning, God created the Laramide orogeny."

"That DC inversion was beautiful."

"And it's not even smoothed yet, just raw beauty." 

"No makeup and still a ten."

"Last one in the vans is a geologist!"

"There are more buttons in this truck than the MT equipment!" ~ Andrei

"Do these trucks automatically downshift? Because mine just did." ~ Andrei, not too long after the buttons quote

"Look! Geology IS useful!" ~ Batz, after propping a door open with a rock

"So where is this water coming from?"

P.S. Yep, I miss you guys. 

First Week in New England

Last Saturday, I hopped on a plane to be the furthest I've ever been from Colorado while living in New England for nine weeks. I'm living in Nashua while working in Westford at the MIT Haystack observatory through a NSF REU (research experience for undergrads). First big difference: green forests everywhere. Second: people drive very fast here. Third: Springtime actually lasts longer than three weeks here, and it's nice. Fourth: I can't walk up a mountain that's a ten minute-jog away anymore. It'll be fun though.

My office building.

Monday

Talk about fire hose. My first day was kinda crazy, and I didn't have coffee in the morning. The drive to work is cool, though. It's a half hour commute through the green forest. My mentor gave me a bunch of MATLAB code. And by a bunch, I mean a boatload. I now have a few subprojects: One looking at a storm on Oct 14, one looking at the convection patterns, and one that is supposed to clean up a former REU student's code (which is terribly disorganized and not well-documented...c'mon people--it's CompSci 101) and check if it actually does what it says it does. Yikes. I've gotten to run some MATLAB code, which I had missed dearly, but no writing. Science-wise, I feel like I need to know what's going on.

Tuesday

Today was less overwhelming. I spent the morning researching what I'm doing and getting the jargon cleared up by reading papers. One of the things I'm supposed to understand is the South Atlantic Magnetic Anomaly. This is an area on the east of South America where the magnetic field is much weaker, which poses problems to GPS and spacecraft flying through this area. So that was cool learning about. I also tried to learn about how sudden stratospheric warmings affect the ionosphere, which is the area of the atmosphere I'm studying this summer. After meeting with my mentor in the afternoon, I had a better picture of where I'm going, at least in the short term. I then fought with MATLAB over shading and interpolating the plots I was making and making a movie out of them.

Right before lunch, we were notified about free food in the conference room. There were delicious muffins and coffee (my would-be second cup). The day before, I went to Target and bought some K-cups because the office does not have a regular ole coffee maker, and buying the K-Cups in the vending machine will add up. Still, my coffee habit will cost me $40 this summer, assuming I drink two cups a day only on workdays and manage to get another box of K-Cups on clearance when this box runs out.

Wednesday

I made a movie before 10AM! Great start to the day. The rest of my day consisted of making more movies and freezing frames that were interesting. Then I looked into what scintillation was before looking at the scintillation patterns that corresponded to the interesting time. What is scintillation? It is bad. It messes up GPS stuff with refraction and diffraction.

We have seminars at 4PM some of the days. Today the Radar Equation came back to haunt me, which I kind of learned in Intro to Electromagnetic Methods. 

Thursday

It was really good programming weather today, as it rained all day. It was nice to drink coffee and code with the drip drop of rain. The only downside is that my hair is super frizzy and poofy. Maybe I should straighten it. 

I spent most of my day looking at one piece of code and making a similar script that gets scintillation data rather than TEC (total electron content) data, and from a different database. At lunch, it felt like I had done nothing, but I got a plot to work by the end of the day. MATLAB isn't visualizing the data how I want to though..so that's the struggle now. 

I'm starting to get into a rhythm now. The days are really running together, and I only have a few hours of free time after work, exercising, and then cooking and eating dinner. The summer is zooming by already. 

Friday

I still fought with MATLAB for hours today, trying to overlay some data on some plots. I might need to do it in Python. My mentor is trying to find me the code that does it in Python. 

This morning a scientist from the MIT electrical engineering dept. came by and gave a seminar. I really enjoyed it because a). There were donut holes and coffee b). She was really awesome c). The technology she was talking about was very interesting. Stuff like being able to track people's movements with WiFi. 

Sunday

This weekend was the first my fellow interns and I ventured into Boston, and was a lot of fun. Yesterday we went to Cambridge and checked out Harvard. The buildings are so old and cool. We went to Harvard's museum of natural history. I ended up in a conversation with one of the people who worked there about Mines and geophysics. Random. One thing that this museum had that Denver's doesn't is gross animals in clear jars including millipedes, eels, and spiders. Boston was pretty cool. We walked along the whole Freedom Trail, past Paul Revere's house and the Old North Church, and leading up to the USS Constitution. Oh, and along the way we ran into this parade in Charlestown that had colonial-era to current era living history people, as well as bagpipes. It was strange to run into, but a pleasant surprise. We then went back by Faneuil Hall and ate a bread bowl of chowder...yum. 

Downtown Boston

I'm really enjoying getting to see different places. I'm sure we'll hit up Boston again, as well as visit the MIT campus. I really want to explore Nashua as well. But it's been a great week! 

Geophysics Field Camp Week Four: Onwards, Upwards

The view as our caravan left Pagosa Springs, CO

"Remember this moment," Dr. Hale said to us at the end of the final presentation. "There have been only a few times in my life where the geophysics gives something completely unexpected."

We did it. We survived Colorado School of Mines Geophysics Field Camp. And in style, too, as our professors, industry people, and our beloved department head said it was the best Geophysics Field Camp they had seen in their years at Mines. All the early mornings and those two late nights and the weird weather and the orange vests and wanting to kill our classmates and loving our classmates to death and funk music and spilled coffee and being annoyed at geophysics and being convinced that geophysics is awesome went into those four weeks. And in the end, it an incredible experience.

It is such a privileged to be able to do geophysics in every stage of its process on an area that no one has seen down in the subsurface before. "You're right, this isn't Kafadar Commons anymore," Andrei said to me after we got so excited from the preliminary seismic section. Doing geophysics on Kafadar is incredibly uninteresting, when it comes to the subsurface. Doing geophysics on the unknown is exciting. It's like being an explorer.

Here I am getting ready to drive and operate the vibroseis truck.
Andrei is in the background, waiting for me to hurry up. 

***

People hate airports and fly all the time, but for me, it never gets old. I rolled to the United terminal and the sign above me advertised Mines. As if it needs my attention some more.

Where is the water coming from? Where is the water going? Two important questions when doing a geothermal investigation.

Where are we coming from? Mines.  And before that, other various places that all combined to lead us to here.

Where are we going? 

***

"So how does it feel to officially be a senior?" Michelle, the Geophysics Department assistant asked at the End-Of-Field-Session BBQ right after our final presentation.

I responded with 10% sarcasm: "It's surreal. I feel like this year and field session have all culminated in my geophysical journey though Mines as a sort of rite of passage to make us seniors."

"But now there's Senior Year..."

"Yeah. But in all seriousness, as I told Austin earlier, we've made it through Junior Year, and now we've made it through Field Camp. We can do anything."

***

I actually ate breakfast that morning at the airport. I never eat breakfast other than coffee. While I finished my sandwich, the television report showed something about California Chrome. I laughed. California Chrome was the name of Craig's (one of the TAs) van. I guess Field Camp held some fun times.

I was exhausted. My brain had been going non-stop since...well, January. The swift transition from school to Field Camp to summer internship had left me no time for processing (mental processing, not data processing). Even while going through security my brain did not fully comprehend that those four weeks were over, and I was moving on to Massachusetts for my summer internship. I was so glad that Field Session was over. And thinking back, I was pretty miserable academically right before that, yearning for Field Session to start. I had spent my time looking forward to things ending. I even dreamed about graduating during those four weeks.

Where am I coming from? I knew this.

Where am I going?

I buckled up and sat for a while, waiting for the plane to take off. It began rolling. It began rolling slightly faster. Then it pivoted onto the runway. It stopped. Then, WHOOOOSHH! 

It was then when I realized where I was going; where my classmates were going.

Onwards, upwards.

The 2014 Colorado School of Mines Geophysics Field Camp (photo by Dawn)

Geophysics Field Camp Week Three: I Like Processing Things

Out in the field, I had geophysics dreams.

I was walking along the survey line taking measurements with the magnetometer. I wasn’t the only one who had geophysics dreams out in the field. Our professor and field camp coordinator Andrei (more affectionately known as "Swiddy" or "Dr. Drei.") said he had dreams about driving around in his truck, making sure everything was going well. My classmate Roy said he had a dream about a geophysics survey as well.

Back in Golden in front of a computer, the hours are less intense than when we were out in the field. Geophysics doesn’t take over our entire lives…well, at least we get weekends back here.

But geophysics still takes over my dreams.

I’m part of a two-woman team that is processing the gravity data from our geophysical surveys down near Pagosa Springs, Colorado. Gravity processing is fairly uncomplicated, and as a result, we have been able to get things done relatively quickly. First we had to apply some corrections to the data, since gravity measurements are sensitive to elevation, latitude, and terrain/topography. Then came the fun part of creating a model for our data. This consists of drawing a geologic model of the subsurface in a program. The program tells us how well our model matches our data, and we tweak the model to reduce error but at the same time to agree with the interpretations that our classmates in other methods are producing. The past couple of days have mostly consisted of forward modeling for us.

Our working forward model of the subsurface created in GMSYS. It fits the data pretty well.

All this gravity gets into my head I think, because I had a dream that the Gravity and Magnetics team was racing to get everything done before everyone else. Which is weird because in real life, we really don’t need to race.

At any rate, I'm enjoying the computers part much more than the exhausting part. It’s not as fun in some ways of course, but I love the fact that my team is on track and that we don’t have to do geophysics stuff from 7AM until 6PM anymore. Our classmates in charge play funky music. Sometimes there are donuts. One day I ate two donuts. It's a good environment for geophysics. 

Out in the field, I would shovel my lunch into my mouth and be done in ten minutes.

Back in the lab, I go make myself a nice sandwich and savor the hour lunch break we get to take.

Out in the field, time would fly in the flurry of activity that geophysical surveying is.

Back in the lab, it’s more relaxed, at least in this third week. We get time to process processing.

I like processing things…I like being able to think about something and understand it. I have also had time to mentally process the field part of field camp and catch up on sleep. As one of my friends in the GP class of 2014 said, "It's the most fun you never want to have again." So true. 

I had another dream. I was helping the EM team (electromagnetics) write their report while they did some processing stuff. That dream was way too realistic, because it ended up happening. To add to the list of realistic geophysics dreams, Roy said he had a dream that he was processing the EM data. This also continued to happen. My classmate Tiffany had a dream about a bear, which makes sense because we saw a bear almost every day out in the field, but the part where the bear attacked did not come true.

I wonder if I will ever have ordinary dreams again, such as the ones I used to have a a kid; dreams containing tornadoes, tsunamis, and giant earthquakes that are geophysically inaccurate.