GREEN

More than half of my friends are doing medicine. 30% are doing engineering and the rest are doing other types of courses such as accountancy, pharmacy, poli sci and etc. Studying geology makes me out of the ordinary. Even till this day, I'm still happy that I rejected the offer to do medicine because the picture of me in a white coat and attending patients are something that I would not enjoy in the future. It's not that I can't pull it off, but I feel more satisfied doing something that doesn't have to do with talking and understanding people. I can only tolerate children (that include babies and toddlers). 

Ever since I was a kid, I always questioned myself about the existence of earth. How do rocks formed? Why do some places have volcanoes eg: Indonesia but Malaysia doesn't have one? How do you get gold? What kind of places you should head to if you want to look for petroleum? I never questioned about sickness or diseases; the topic doesn't intrigues me at all.

Perhaps, in future posts I should tell you what I do as a geology student. Not everyone can be a geologist, you need good eyes and understanding of many processes. You have to be physically and mentally tough, and eating out of canned foods when you are in the field feel like dining in a 5-stars restaurant. Earth is a subject that human still hasn't fully grasped; each day you'll learn a lot more and subjects in geology constantly change. In the early 1900's, scientists and geologists did not believe in plate tectonics. Nowadays, you can even predict the continents' locations in the next million years. 

I thank God that I'm not doing medicine. Thank You for helping me to choose my future. 

My happiest state of mind is when I'm in the field.

Green stick-notes on my mineral deposits notes. I enjoyed it very much.

HAT

' I would travel across the land'

'Searching far and wide'

-Pokemon theme song

The 2 lines from one of my favorite songs reflect my life as a future geologist. I love what I'm doing now, often expressed it in my previous posts. I just simply like the idea of waking up at 6am, driving for a few minutes or hours to destinations, arrive and look at the landscapes. When the prof/s post/s questions such as, "tell me what you see", "what do you think happened to the rocks?", "why did you say this is a metamorphic rock? give me the evidence" etc, I would cram my brain and try to remember all those hours spent in classes and labs looking at AFM diagram, identifying muscovite and phlogopite, and cursing my way through the semester while trying to keep my sanity. I also love having my lunch under the sun while admiring the thrust fold that overturned the underlying rocks. And now I know how mountains are made and what will happen to the Everest in million years from now.

The more you see, the less you know.

And it humbles me. We are so tiny like a speck of dust in the galaxy that we actually know almost nothing about the universe.

Again, it humbles me.

Chile, Feb 2011: My usual field trip gears - a hat, a hand lens, a rock hammer, a pair of hiking boots, a pair of shades, a bagpack (with water, snack bars, sunscreen, vaseline, write-in-the-rain notebook, camera), my dice-watch, sometimes a compass. Oh, a sweater/jacket, t-shirt and jeans/hiking pants.

DEBATE

As a Geology student, I had been given with the opportunities to go to many places under the tag-line field education. I must say that these were many of my best memories and I didn't ever imagined to reach those places, let alone to learn about 'em in my lifetime. But, I had been there. And would never trade the memories with anything, because they were just awesome.

2011-Chile
2012-SW USA
2013-Possibly New Zealand

I feel obligated to share about my experiences as a student and a tourist (at the same time). But writing is never an expertise of mine. It is always hard to pour my thoughts and feelings about the trips but I will hopefully do it, when I have ample time to just sit and upload all the good pictures from my Facebook with little elaboration alongside them. If you're reading this, you might be an engineering or a medical student; me, being different than most of my friends will be more than happy to share my life as a Geology student.

Hopefully, this will be consistent.

Cheers to regular update.

BROMANCE

Less than 2 weeks before school ends and I'll be saying goodbye to second year. Wait, field school is waiting so not saying goodbye, YET, until Whitefish ends. I'm pretty content with school so far. After the epic field trip, going back to school was something that I looked forward to but grade was bad which I expected after the horror of structural first midterm.

WHY PIERRE? WHY DID YOU PUT THAT MAP THAT WE DIDN'T LEARN IN LAB? WHY? WHY?

Ok, so that's in the past. Now talking about present.

Be getting the mark for the second midterm. Fingers cross, all I need is a pass and I know what to do for final. And I think I can do it although the mark is still vague but I would still be satisfied with any number. Not to say I'm not smart, HELL YEAH I'M SMART. But structural geology is not something you can learn and get just by looking at the map. Unless if you're Alex which pretty much gets 90 in all classes.

Insyallah, this semester will be better. That's all I'm asking for.

House hunting is tiring, NY is still a plan but depends on whether baby scores any job, at least for the summer. If he does, god bless that he has a good future. Praying the best for him. Less than 3 months before home and research job yeahhhh! Score 1 for myself

:)

SHIT

This semester is nothing but BAD. Okay not too bad cause I went to the most awesome field trip ever and looking forward to more of it in the future, but it is still a pretty bad semester.

Well, classes are hard. Had to drop one class because I was supposed to have a midterm the week I came back from the trip and fever took control of my body which later forced me to study metamorphic ONLY, instead of REMOTE SENSING and METAMORPHIC. To make things worse, Geochem mark is up and surprisingly, everyone did bad including me. Whaddaheck happened la wei?! We are totally shocked with the marks.

I guess dropping 1 class is a good decision since I will have more time to study. Freaking TV stop seducing me.

Lord, help me please because You are the best.