And so it continues...

Here's an update on the past week.

This weekend I went to DC with Matt to see an old friend from earlier in college. She's working on a PhD now at a museum in Argentina, and she is just about wrapping up her vacation where she traveled all around the world. Jealous? You bet I am. It was good seeing her, last time we met up she wasn't doing so great, but that was three years ago. A lot can change in that amount of time. Specifically, the people you work for.

This past Saturday was our departmental end of the year party, it's called "Entropy", a very dork-tastic name. The theme this year was to come dressed like your favorite decade/era. In true paleo-nerd form, I came dressed as a trilobite. I claimed I was from the Paleozoic era. Hooray for my own nerdy interpretation of a theme!

Woot!

I also won money for a talk I gave last week. I got first prize out of all the talks done by master's students. I have no idea how much, Matt thinks it is about $300. I'll take that, thanks!

My roommie, moved today. A little after 8am two movers showed up, packed up her stuff, and off it went. Shortly afterward, she tossed the cats in her car, and in a flurry of cat fur, they too were off. They're headed to Florida, and in a couple weeks she will be starting her new job with Chevron and living in a NEW house in New Orleans. I'm a little sad. It all happened so quickly, I kind of sat in the living room for a few minutes not knowing what to do. What I NEED to do now is find something for my walls, because all of the decorations that were up as of this morning belonged to her. The downstairs of my house kind of looks like a prison now with bare white walls.

Another sign that things are moving on is that I gave my first final exam this week. Most people finished with about an hour to spare, so I'm going to go ahead and hope that is a good thing. I didn't think the exam was that hard, but I'm constantly reminding myself that although the things I am teaching are second nature to me, they are totally new and confusing to non-geologists. I just assumed people understood what rocks are. They are ROCKS for goodness sake. But, I guess I was wrong.


I'm currently finishing up on a writing assignment for my science writing for the general public class. I looked through current research, found something interesting/news worthy, and I am attempting to write about it on a level that most people can understand. I learned this semester that this is somewhere around a 4th grade reading level for our country as a whole (scary). It's HARD. To give you an idea of what I'm up against, I'm trying to explain how an animal is living at the bottom of the Mediterranean Sea where there is zero oxygen, and how it has nifty adaptations so it can do this.

I can do it, I'm a grad student.