Field Trip

I have been stealing a few minutes here and there from my studies (chemistry mostly) to read Tom Friedman's book The World is Flat. The point that strikes me hardest about the book is that kids from other countries see education as a vehicle to get good jobs and avoid debilitating poverty. They want our jobs, and Americans need to be aware of that. Any knowledge job, something that can be done at a computer screen, can be handed over to one of these foreign job competitors. Programming is a prime example of one of those jobs. Look at all the programming jobs that have gone to India. Now other jobs are following.

I think I made a good choice with my field of geology. It wasn't a conscious choice, really. I was drawn to geology because I like it, not because I had some formula for a job that couldn't be outsourced. Geologists will always have to go where the rocks are. It's a boots on the ground type of job. You might get an occasional Chinese geologist or an Indian geologist working here in North America, but they still have to go where the rocks are. You can't study a rock outcrop from Bangalore.

That thought came to me this morning as the events of yesterday's field trip danced in the back of my mind. 17 students from my geology class (not all of them geology majors) loaded into a couple of vans and drove up into the Snowy Range to look at a continental collision that took place around 1.4 billion years ago. Wow. Cool.

That trip gave me my first real feeling that I am studying geology, and that I may actually become a geologist someday. Up until now my classes have consisted of prerequisite or required classes like public speaking or math. Yesterday we pulled on our boots and went out to the rocks, which is what geologists are supposed to do. We stopped to look at an outcrop of dolomite. I grabbed a nearby rock, a fist-sized chunk of hard quartzite, and used it as a hammer to knock off a piece of the outcrop. I banged the dolomite several times until a fragment broke off. Another student became interested in what I was doing and was looking over my shoulder. We were both surprised that the inside of the rock looked totally different from the weathered surface. The outside was a dull, tan, almost sandy looking texture, and the inside was dark gray and crystalline and had a marble-like quality. That was a learning moment for both of us. That's why you have to go to the rocks.

In other news, the kids in the apartment across the street partied until after 2:30 a.m. last night. That makes three weekends in a row, pretty much since the start of school. Although I woke up in the middle of the night to their music and loud talking, I was able to go right back to sleep. I wasn't bothered by it. It makes me think about my own experience in school, and I wonder if any of them will take the round-a-bout path I took that landed me back here at the university over 30 years later. I doubt it.