misery is...

...when you've got a massive respiratory bug that has you hacking/blowing out nasties continuously, plus you have two unrelated uncomfortable conditions, and you're in the field in the rain.

Luckily, I didn't have to expend much physical effort during this project. So I could scrunch under an overhang and feel sorry for myself.

The problem with fieldwork is that sometimes it takes a lot of money/coordination to get everything set up, and you may have a small window of opportunity to get everything done. It also may be impossible to get someone to cover for you. So most of the time, I just suck it up if I'm sick.

I've only stopped fieldwork because of illness once. In that case, one of the subcontractors was also fighting the same bug, so when I gave up mid-morning, the response was "yay!" and they tore out of there as if they were afraid I would change my mind.

So how much misery does it take you before you give up and go home?

super duper elite

It must be close to the end of the calendar year...I finally got my super duper elite travel reward status.

I travelled a fair bit in grad school, but my field site wasn't anywhere near the sort of places that had travel rewards. I spent a lot of time in a local no-tell motel. So by the time I finished, I had depleted all my rewards and lost my special status. I only started building up my points again this year.

I don't think my super-duper elite status really does anything for me. The reward program has like 7 levels, and once you get past the basic "travel once and get a card" level, the benefit appears to be just increasingly snazzy cards.

That's ok. I get enough rewards to never have to pay for a hotel room on my own, and occasionally enough to buy the odd household appliance. What else could a girl ask for?

grading fun

Thanks to continual internet problems (gotta love travelling) I am hopelessly behind on my blog writing as well as my blog reading. But I did notice a post that reminded my of one of my grad school pet peeves: horribly messy and/or incomplete work.

I taught the laboratory portion of an upper-level required course. My students were generally at least 20 years old, were majoring in the subject, and needed to pass the course to graduate.

How did these students get this far into their college career without learning such basics as filling in all the blanks on labs or even tests? I thought they were too old for the "I can't give partial credit if you leave it blank" lecture, but I was wrong.

When the students didn't bother to answer questions, it mystified me but did make things a lot easier to grade. More aggravating were the smudgy hand-written answers on separate paper which not only were not in order, but were not labelled with a question number. I hated going on treasure hunts. They were a sure-fire way to ensure that the partial credit got a lot less generous.

male-female ratio

Sorry about the long silence - I've had lousy internet service during my travels. Back to your usual programming...

I've worked in areas where the male:female geologist ratio is approaching 50:50, and where the majority of environmental science/engineering students coming out of college are female. But I've also worked in areas where female geologists are still a rarity, and drillers/subcontractors can refuse to work with women and not commit career suicide. Those areas aren't nearly as far south (in the US) as one might think.

So I'm wondering: what percentage of working geologists in your area are female? Are you seeing the number of women increase over time?

I don't stay up at night worrying about exact male:female ratios, but I've worked in places where female geologists are essentially unheard of, and they've been lonely and discouraging. I don't have the personality to be a pioneer, I guess.

clothing change

I'm usually a little behind when the seasons change, but this week has been cold enough to convince me to switch into winter gear. The lightweight hiking pants have been put away, and I've dragged out the shapeless sweaters, the 2-layer wool long underwear, the silk long underwear, the wool hats, and the carhartts.

Taking out the carhartts reminded me of a particular winter day a couple years ago, when I was working in the middle of nowhere with a subcontractor. We were wearing the same carhartts (obviously different sizes, but same color), and when I pointed this out, he was actually sort of horrified. He never wore those pants again.

Dude! Carhartts only come in about five colors! And carhartts are worn by about 90% of field people! Seriously, if you find a photograph of a geologist, they'll most likely be wearing the distinctively orangey-brown standard carhartts. If you're offended that you end up wearing the same ones as someone else, you need to buy some fancier field pants.

office decor

We all tend to personalize our office. Pictures of families, hobbies, and random stuff end up taking over the odd corners of our desks. Geologists tend to collect rocks.

I'm not a big fan of rocks in general. I'm a dirt and contamination person. Sure, if I'm coring rock or I pick up something cool in the field, I'll take it along. But many times, the interesting rocks don't make it all the way to my office.

So I don't have a rock collection. What I do have is a drilling detritus graveyard.

It started when we (the driller) destroyed a roller bit (example from wikipedia below) in some particularly difficult terrain.
The driller chucked the bit in my direction and said "why don't you take it?"

So I did. I ended up as sort of a broken bit magpie. When something shears off or wears down to uselessness and can't be repaired, I'll take it back to the office as a sort of trophy of a difficult (and expensive!) day. The more mangled, the better.

The problem is that my collection makes for some heavy (and occasionally greasy) paperweights. Next time I move, maybe I'll donate my collection to the next enthusiastic newbie who chirps, "hey, what does this do?"

drilling expectations

I can rant about this sort of thing for days...

As my long-term readers know, I was pretty shy when I started working in consulting. It was hard for me to speak up when I wanted something done differently. So what often happened was that I would let something go for way too long, and then I'd surprise the driller in the middle of whatever and say, "we need to change/add this." This leads to a lot of aggravation.

Now, when a drilling company first arrives at a site, I make an effort to have a truly comprehensive site briefing. This is after I've called the office to make sure we're on the same page. Why are we doing this, what are we looking for, and what are the specific things that I need? Then, when we're ready to start doing whatever, I'll remind the driller again.

Most of the time, all this is overkill. But I'd rather go through everything and make sure that we have everything we need and that there are no surprises. If I've written or reviewed the drilling specification, then I know it should cover everything I need. But the probability that the guy actually doing the work has actually read the thing is fairly low.

It sounds simple. But I can't tell you how many time we've arrived at a site and the driller says "I had no idea we needed mud mats/a steam cleaner/to cut through thickets/to get water four miles away" and it turns out to be a colossal pain in the ass and we all start out cranky.