Time to work, time to play

The November Scientiae Carnival asks: "What is the best part of your job/life as a scientist, and what is the worst part?"

For me the answer to both has got to be the freedom to set my own schedule. I love the fact that I can work whenever I want/feel inspired/have energy, so if I feel like working all night long (like much of this week), I can do so. However, the down side to such a schedule is that it can be difficult to take time off without feeling guilty for not working. People who have jobs which require them to be there at specific hours are free to play during their non-work hours. Those of us who have jobs which aren't tied to a clock, on the other hand, may be free to select which hours are work and which are play, but it is easy to get caught in the trap of thinking during play that one should be working.

My Dream Location

The August Scientiae Carnival asks “what is going on in your life right now? What will be happening in six months or a year from now? What are your goals? Are you looking forward to the next year, or dreading it?”. This is a good time to be asking these questions of myself, since I have only six months remaining of my 1.5 year contract. I am starting to see jobs advertised with January start times, and have been re-vamping my CV and sending out applications and letters of enquiry. I’ve also been looking into the process of applying for funding, with the thought that while it is certainly easier to simply accept a job that is already funded, if I were to do my own funding application I would be able to work in a place of my own choosing doing a tasks that I want to do.

Where do I want to be in six months time? If I could have *everything* I want in life, I’d want to be doing research at a University located in a large town (or small city in the mountains). Someplace with a moderate to cold climate, and a winter where it not only snows, but the snow stays on the ground all winter. I’d want there to be plenty of hiking and cross-country ski trails in easy access from my home. I’d want an indoor rock-climbing gym at the Uni, located reasonably near my office. I’d want there to be a locally active branch of either the SCA or some other Medieval Reenactment organization that hosts camping events in the summer and has lots of music/singing/dancing at their winter events. I’d want my research to involve both field work and laboratory work and involve interesting metamorphic rocks that are pretty and have lots of information to convey. Does anyone know where this dream location is?

Continuity

The theme for this month’s Scientiae Carnival is Continuity. This is an appropriate topic for geologists; the theme appears over and over again in our science. Sedimentary geologists have their unconformities marking places where processes failed to display continuity. Metamorphic petrologist look for clues in the chemical zoning of minerals to see if the changes their rock underwent were from one episode of deformation, or if the region had no continuity and has suffered multiple deformational episodes.

But what does the word mean on a personal level? Particularly for one such as myself who leads an odd sort of nomadic existence (moving every 1 to 3 years to a new location, then staying put for a while before moving again). In some ways one could say that my life lacks continuity—by deliberately changing my home base every few years I am denying myself the sort of stability and continuity that people who spend their entire life in one town take for granted. On the other hand, I am able to bring with me certain things which maintain the level of continuity I require for my own comfort levels. As an avid reader, and re-reader of books my library travels with me. (Sure it is expensive to ship books, but more expensive to replace them!) No matter where I am, at any time I feel the need for emotional comfort I can pick up an old favorite book and be transported to a setting that I know and love, and can watch as the characters once again solve the problems that they face.

Another place I find continuity is in my love of historical reenactment. Having joined a historically themed organization back when I was in highschool I am guaranteed to find friends waiting for almost anywhere I move who share similar interests to my own. After so many years playing that game I find that no matter where I go I have friends in common with new people I meet via that organization.

The third type of continuity in my life is the familiarity of the academic environment. While no two universities are (or should be) the same, still there is an atmosphere in every geology department I’ve ever entered. There is something about hallways filled with displays of rocks and minerals and geologic maps that is inspiring, comforting, and pretty, all at once. I took a number of years off between completing my master’s and starting my PhD program, during which time I worked as a massage therapist, rather than doing science. When I was first considering going back for the PhD I visited the University, and just walking through the hallway, looking at their display made me feel like I’d come home, and I knew, beyond a shadow of a doubt, that academia was where I wanted to be, and that geologic research was what I wanted to be doing.