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6 May 2013
End of semester update
…and I finally, finally have a chance to breathe. It’s been a really busy couple of months for me – not just because I was teaching a lecture class for the first time, but because I was also getting ready for my technical thesis defense.
8 March 2013
My experience as a woman in the geosciences
Being deep in the throes of thesis-wrangling has left me little time for blogging lately, but as a woman and a geoscientist I definitely thought it was important to write a little bit about International Women’s Day, and about my own experiences. I first became aware that this was a day of celebration when my graduate advisor and I encountered a parade in downtown Xela when we were in Guatemala doing fieldwork for my thesis. It was a beautiful day and the parade-goers were lively and excited and enthused.
24 February 2013
So you want to be a volcanologist?
In addition to my blogging and on-again-off-again relationship with Twitter, I like to take my geologizing to places outside the office. Just yesterday, I had the opportunity to talk with a girls’ STEM club at my old elementary school about being a volcanologist. I actually do this fairly often, and I’m always really impressed by the questions the students come up with. They’re always inquisitive and thoughtful, and often catch me off guard – which is good!
11 January 2013
A foray into teaching – and a request for advice!
This semester, as part of an attempt to keep myself funded through the end of my PhD (always an uphill battle), I’m going to be teaching a smallish section of our introductory environmental science course. And the main topic is…deep breath…climate change! Not being an expert on climate change, this has me perusing background information to get ready for the content, but also looking at techniques for teaching controversial environmental topics. And I’m looking for help!
17 August 2012
So you’re a new geosciences grad student…
So you’re a new geosciences grad student…and you’re getting ready to start your first semester! Hopefully you’ve chosen a great department and surrounded yourself with professors and students who will excite and challenge you. You’re probably also plowing through a bunch of paperwork and maybe taking a training course on how to be a teaching/graduate/research/etc. assistant. If, at some point in all this, you say “What the heck did I get myself into?” and start feeling panicky, don’t worry – we all do this. Here are a few things to remember as you dive into the deep end of the pool:
25 May 2012
Stages of numerical modeling
I’m currently working on some modeling for my thesis. For unrelated reasons, I happened to read a description of the Kübler-Ross model for stages of grief, and I realized that the cycle actually describes pretty accurately what the past couple of weeks have been like for me. Not only that, but it’s gotten to the point where even if I get my model to run, I’m immediately suspicious of the results. However, I guess since the model is running, I’ve made progress. That doesn’t mean I don’t still have issues.
28 March 2012
If you were to wander into my office this afternoon…
…this is the scene you’d see playing out.
30 January 2012
What’s your geologic genealogy?
Every once in a while this topic pops up among geologists – and the phrase “who is your grandfather” really means “who was your advisor’s advisor?” It’s kind of fun to trace your geologic heritage, so I thought I’d give mine a go. This usually involves looking at graduate degrees (most people don’t list who their undergraduate advisor was, and when you go back farther in time they rarely talk about anything but who the person studied under for their PhD).
24 January 2012
Graduate School Advice: Part 3 – Staying Sane and Happy
Grad school can be an emotional rollercoaster, and there are a lot of cultural forces at work in academia that don’t have grad students’ happiness and mental health as a high priority. Still, it is possible to get through graduate school while minimizing the low points, and I think things are generally getting better in the academic culture (though there is always room for improvement). This is a huge topic, so I’m going to focus on several particular sub-topics: Impostor syndrome, doubt, and guilt (a.k.a. work-life balance).
11 January 2012
Graduate School Advice: Part 2 – Qualifying Exams
You’ve probably heard of the dreaded Qualifying Exam, but what is it like? Well, it varies a lot from school to school and between disciplines, but I can tell you what ours was like in Astronomy at Cornell. The qualifying exam (or “Q-exam”) was split into two parts for us. The first part is a written test at the end of the first year, taken along with the other first …
4 January 2012
Science Resolutions -or- Grad School Lessons Learned
Now that I have finished graduate school and am an older, wiser “post-doctoral fellow”, I was planning to put together a post containing advice on grad school. But then as I thought about it, I realized that the bulk of my advice fell into the “do as I say, not as I do” category. That, combined with the new year and accompanying new job, led me to re-tool my advice …
18 November 2011
Who reads this blog? Followup to a departmental talk on geoblogging
Because AGU’s Fall Meeting is coming up fast, and because we have a lunchtime seminar in my research group, I volunteered to preview my AGU talk. This is something that we often do as a trial run, although since the seminar runs for an hour and AGU talks only last 15 minutes, there’s usually a lot of condensing that goes on afterwards. This year at AGU, I was invited to give a talk in a public affairs session – not my usual venue as a volcanologist. But the session is perfect for a geoblogger:
PA33C. Earth Science Communication in a Changing Media Landscape I Wed. December 7, 1:40 PM – 3:40 PM; Room 302
14 September 2010
A question of time
*Note: Having been temporarily flattened by my yearly fall cold, I’m putting up a non-geology post that I was working on earlier this month and have just enough energy to finish now. I’ll make it back to talking about andesitic eruption deposits just as soon as I emerge from the haze of cold drugs. ‘Tis the season for the arrival of new grad students (geology and otherwise), and ’tis also …
27 January 2010
Hooray!
Quals are over and passed (pending some proposal rewriting and me promising to take a thermodynamics class in the near future). It’s nice not having that stress hanging over my head – now I can relax and get some research done! (Not to mention getting back to blogging more often…)
24 October 2009
GSA Update #3
I always head to GSA with good intentions (i.e., actually writing about things the day they happen), but I usually end up joining the ranks of those catching up with their writing instead. (There’s nothing wrong with this, since I’m not getting paid to write on a schedule or anything, but it annoys me when I do it.) Tuesday at GSA was another great chance to see talks; lots of …
10 September 2009
Speaking well
I won’t touch on the political parts of the President’s speech Wednesday night (or the fallout from adults not being able to behave like adults, on both sides), but I do want to write about the way in which it was delivered. Public speaking is a big part of being a geologist, whether you’re talking to a lab section, lecturing to a class full of hundreds of people, or giving …
31 August 2009
O_o
I don’t usually use emoticons for post titles, but today warrents one. Apparently, everyone at UB had an 8 or 9 AM class today, and they ALL DROVE TO SCHOOL. Meaning parking was gone by 9. Not 10, not 11 – 9 AM. And there were traffic jams. (If you’ve ever been to Buffalo, you’ll know that traffic jams of any sort are usually pretty rare. And by my DC-area …
30 August 2009
A new semester
For me, this means some welcome changes. As a result of earning an NSF Graduate Fellowship, I don’t have to TA this year, so I actually have more time to sit down and work on my own research (instead of spending a lot of time – including whole weekends at one point – just keeping up with grading). This also means that my committee has been encouraging me to take …
21 April 2009
Funding resources for geology graduate students
I have a bit of a plea for the geoblogosphere this week. I’ve volunteered to do some website work for the geology graduate student association here at UB, and one page is going to be dedicated to useful resources. I’m compiling a list of Earth science-related scholarships, grants and fellowships, and I want to make sure that I don’t miss anything. Can everyone have a look at what I’ve come …
13 April 2009
Just a little celebrating
I usually try to be modest, but I’m just so excited by this that I felt like posting:NSF Graduate Research Fellowship Awardees (Sorry for the repeat, folks who follow on Twitter – it’s only this once, I promise!) Not only am I the only applicant from UB that received an award, I beat out all the engineering, medical and life science applicants – and at UB, we have a lot …
