How quickly we fall back into good habits

Working on my PhD project necessitated developing a number of good habits with regard to work patterns. Although it has been two full years (and a week or three) since I finished my thesis and got on a plane to start my first post doc position it turns out that some of my work habits from here are tied to the town, not just the house in which I lived then. Now that I am back in Tasmania I am finding it easy to pick up the pieces of that project and get back into "thesis mode", breaking the list of things that need to be done into tiny bits and working on them. Taking breaks to exercise, get food, and catch up with friends I have not seen in a couple of years, but still being way more productive than I have been in the past six months since that post-doc position ended, when I was on what is better described "vacation mode".

While it was a delightful vacation, I find that I am enjoying working on this project once again. Today I looked at thin sections of my samples in the microscope. The first thin sections I have seen in person since leaving (I had plenty of microprobe time analysing the experiments I did, but no actual rocks to play with). I would say that I had forgotten how pretty they are, but, really, I hadn't. I do have plenty of photos (and good ones!) of these samples, but there is something nice about being to rotate the stage and see the colours change.

why you should publish before you finish your degree: a cautionary tale

When I completed writing my PhD thesis two years ago I boarded the plane the very next day to head off to my first post-doctoral position. Somehow, while I made a few attempts to write a paper based on that research during the 1.5 years of that post-doc contract, I didn't actually finish writing it—the first couple of drafts were still attempting to include too much information.

It will come as no surprise to anyone to hear that I continued to not work on that paper during the six months I was in Scandinavia on a visitor's visa living with my new-found love. Now that I have returned to Australia to submit my application for a permanent resident visa so that he and I may continue living together I have begun again, at long last, to working on that paper. One advantage to waiting until now is that instead of discussing the paper and the proper aims and scope thereof with my erstwhile adviser over email I can stop into his office and get real time interaction and feedback.

Today we had our first face-to-face meeting in two years, and he cautioned me that he expected that, given how long it has been since I have worked on this project, that it would probably take a good three days just to re-familiarize myself with what I was doing so that I could move forward on the project. How I wish that he weren't correct in that.

I recall having, on more than one occasion, cursed previous researchers who studied these rocks for the information that they left out of their theses or publications. Today I am cursing myself for what, now, appears to be a fairly random organizational system which has made it difficult to find the spreadsheets I need.

An additional complication I have encountered is my computer upgrade. I purchased a much-need new computer last October, and while I was able to replace most of the programs on it, it was not possible to replace my copy of ArcMap. This is the program in which I recorded the positions of each and every analysis point from every microprobe session I ever did during my PhD research. It is a wonderful program which permits one to accurately align photographs with x-y coordinates such that one can see at a glance where on each crystal each analysis point is located.

In the course of my research I exported the images for many of the samples to CorelDraw in order to create figures to be used in the thesis. I now wish to create a new figure for the paper I am working on, but the exported version contains the location of the analysis points for three out of four of the minerals used in the calculations. This means that I need to open the ArcMap files. I should be able to do this when next I am at the university, by using one of their computers, but it will require a bit of effort to explain to the program the new location of all of the files required.

So now the researcher who I find myself cursing for incomplete information is none other than my past self! There is no one to blame but me, each time I chose to do something other than writing this paper while the information was all still fresh in my mind I was also choosing to make the eventual writing of the paper just that little bit more difficult. I freely admit that, at the time I made those choices, it seemed like a reasonable price to pay, but now the time is nigh, and, indeed, it looks like it just may be a good three days to get back up to speed on this project so that I can finish it.

Wish me luck—as one of my colleagues pointed out to me today "research which is not published is wasted effort", and I do not wish all of that effort to have been wasted.

Google+ for geologists

I am not certain if this is a good idea or not, but when a friend sent me a Google+ invite to my personal email address, I used that address to send an invite to the address attached to this blog. After all, this is the address that I keep logged in and have my GoogleReader geology feeds set up. Unlike the account associated with my personal email address, which had no suggestions of people I may know, this address came with a bunch of suggestions, several of whom I recognize as fellow geobloggers. Therefore I created a circle called "geologists" and added them to it. I have no idea if it tells you that you are now in my circle, but if it does you now know why…

It let me set up "sparks" for "metamorphic petrology" and "orogenesis", but they don't look like they have much information available at this time.

orogenesis

I have been far too busy enjoying the fact that I moved to Scandinavia for love to post very often, but I feel compelled to play in this month's Accretionary Wedge. My favourite geology word would have to be orogenesis. I love mountains better than any other land form, and the process of their formation is endlessly fascinating. The microscopic changes which happen in the metamorphic rocks at depth during mountain building are rich with information about the processes that built the peaks.

Metaphorical rocks

I have been taking a language class since moving to Scandinavia so that I can learn to understand the local language. Last week we had a homework assignment to write about our new city, and there was an essay in the textbook that we could use as an example/inspiration for our own writing.

Being a geologist with little interest in cities my essay didn't look much like the one in the book, which focused on various tourist destinations in a major Scandinavian city. Instead I spoke about the fact that January was a good time to arrive here because then it is cold enough it doesn't rain, mentioning that I do not care for rain in the winter, but I love snow, and find the ice-crystal covered trees much prettier than bare trees. From there I went on to discuss the interesting people I have met, and ending with a paragraph explaining that I am looking forward to summer because then I will be able to see the rocks; I have been told that the local rocks are ______, and that is the prettiest rock type.

The word I had in that blank was meant to be "metamorphic". However, when I asked my favourite on-line dictionary for the local word for "metamorphic" it didn't know the word, so I instead called upon Google Translate, which helpfully provided me the word "metaforiska", so I used it. However, when the teacher returned my essay she wrote on the page "metaphorical? Is that really what you meant?" Oops! Checking Wikipedia the local language it turns out that the word I should have used was metamorfa.

However, when I think of it further, it occurs to me that, perhaps, I did choose the correct word after all. Metamorphic rocks, can, indeed, serve as a metaphor for life. In this world we are born as soft, yielding creatures (babies = ocean floor sediments). Over time we are subject to heat and pressure ( = rules from parents & society) which gradually transform us into first older children (phyllite) and then teenagers (low grade schist) and finally mature adults (high grade schist, mylonite, or even migmatite) with the record of our experiences both moulding who we are as people and leaving a permanent record in our souls (zoning in porphyroblasts, inclusion trails, flow banding, etc…) The more difficult the life, the more character we develop, and the stronger we need to be (which is why the prettiest rocks are the ones which are most deformed).

links to other blogs

I just read a wonderful series of posts by Life in a Plane Light describing how metamorphic reactions turn boring old mud into beautiful garnet schist. If anyone missed it, part one talks about the factors that make up metamorphism, the second talks about the first changes that happen to the mud when heat is applied, and the third adds deformation into the equation and gets us to the garnet. If you haven't read them yet they are so worth a look.

slickensides vs slickenlines

In my current job I am learning any number of interesting things as I look things up in the course of editing so as to be certain that terms are being used correctly. Today's noteworthy subject to look up is the difference between the terms "slickensides" and "slickenlines". I only recall the former from my undergraduate structure courses, and neither term has come up in my own research since then. There was a time when looking up such geologic terms meant reaching for a geologic dictionary. These days it can sometimes be more effective to reach for the internet. I just found an interesting article which nicely clarifies the difference between the two words, and why there are two such closely related words in the first place.

Slickensides refers to the planar, polished, surface of a fault plane (the polishing occurring when the rocks rub past one another. Slickenlines, on the other hand, refers to the liner scratches which occur on such a surface, as a projection on one side of the fault scratches a grove onto the other. Most of the slickensides I have seen in the field contained slickenlines. No wonder my teachers and classmates simply used the term "slicks" when discussing them informally in the field.