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my final fall semester of undergrad (hopefully. oh god, i sure hope so) starts monday! i’m excited and nervous because it’s going to be SUPER busy but full of things i love. this semester’s “the big one” because i’m applying to grad schools, which involves the whole application process and also stuff like taking the GRE. i’m tutoring again but also TAing an intro lab, which i’m super excited about!! since my goal is to be a professor, getting more teaching experience and getting to instruct a whole class is going to be really good practice for me. i’m doing a LOT of research—i’m presenting last year’s stratigraphy project at the GSA conference in october, working on a new project out in the chihuahua desert, and helping out with a more local project. the local project is cool because it’s a whole team; a dam is about to be put in place that will flood the outcrop, so we’re basically rushing to extract as much data as possible first. it’s also a super cool outcrop because it seems to have been a transitional environment from swamp to marine and was downhill from most of the things around it, so we’re finding things like charcoal from local forest fires in layers! it’s also so rich in plant fossils that one of the team members is doing nothing but messing with hundreds of plant samples (idk how he has time for anything else, he’s literally ALWAYS in the paleo lab). my research in the desert is going to involve comparing the geochemistry and lithology of the cobbles in a conglomerate to their source to better understand deposition in the area (it’s a VERY strange situation out where i’m working!). i love geochemistry and even though sedimentary rocks are my least favorite kind of rock i always dive headfirst into research and find myself having a blast. i’m nervous about applying to grad schools.. my transcript’s a mess due to the health issues i was dealing with for a couple years, but i do have a lot of research experience as well as the tutoring and TA jobs working in my favor. we’ll see! i’ve decided that if i can find a mentor who can work on it with me i’d like to specialize in plutons in mountain arcs, especially looking at reinjection and magma mingling and how the history of magma movement is preserved in deformation. i’m reading papers about it to get more background knowledge and it’s super fun because i love learning more about the topic! it’s also so rewarding to read a paper talking about concepts that would have gone over my head two years ago and feel like i’m totally following. :) i’m hoping to start reaching out to potential advisors in the next few months and seeing if any can meet up with me at GSA (and hopefully the fact that i’m presenting comes off as a bit impressive—not sure, but it definitely won’t hurt!). i’m really lucky in that both my parents went to grad school, so i have a ton of help figuring all of this out. it would definitely be overwhelming on my own! i’m also getting closer with my friends in the geology department (many of whom are working on the big group project) so i’ve been getting a lot more social time in lately, which feels amazing. i didn’t realize how isolated i was feeling until i broke out of it! i’ve been feeling super optimistic and i think i'm in a good place to start this semester ^_^