Tonight is an auspicious night! It is 1 am and I have just emailed off my geologic background to my advisor for review and edits! This is the first section of my master's thesis that I have completely drafted, and it was, I believe, the most difficult.
I had to figure out how to summarize the late Miocene extensional history of Death Valley, explain it's relevance to the competing explanations for the mechanism of the exhumation of the Black Mountains, and then discuss the previous geochronologic work in the area. Sounds straightforward, but there is such an immense body of work about Death Valley that it was quite an undertaking. It took me seven weeks to write this section, and much of that was re-reading articles, studying figures intently, looking up new articles, and making multiple outlines to organize my thoughts.
I am really pleased to have met my deadline for sending out a draft. It may not be a pretty draft, but it is as complete as I could make it, even if there are notes such as (figure here) left in.
Tomorrow I will begin on my methods section. The goal is to have that completed in the next two weeks, leaving the last week of February and most of March to deal with results and discussion. I don't have all the data from my results processed through the computer yet (this is out of my hands)...so I need to be ready for that.
My main feeling right now is relief, but I am also a little proud. I wasn't really sure how this section would get written, but it did. I think it will only get easier from here.
Sunday, February 10, 2013
Thursday, January 24, 2013
Environmental Consulting, from the #upgoerfive perspective
There's a meme going around called #upgoerfive, where you have have to describe your work with the 1,000 (or ten hundred) most common words in English. Below is my attempt to describe my job in site remediation at an environmental and engineering consulting firm.
If you'd like to make your own, the text editor is here: http://splasho.com/upgoer5/
Enjoy!
"At my job, we go and look at places where the water and the ground are not clean. Clean water and ground keep people from a sooner death. We see how not clean the water and ground are, and think of ways to make the water and ground clean again. Making the water and the ground clean takes a lot of money and a lot of time. People who made the water and ground not clean do not always want to spend money to make it clean again. Sometimes we can't find the people who made things not clean. Then other people have to spend money instead. There are important people who need us to make the water and ground clean as part of their job, and they have ways it must be done. Sometimes the important people and the people with the money do not agree on how to make water and ground clean again. Then my job is to help both people agree so that the clean up work gets finished and there is less sooner death in the world"
If you'd like to make your own, the text editor is here: http://splasho.com/upgoer5/
Enjoy!
"At my job, we go and look at places where the water and the ground are not clean. Clean water and ground keep people from a sooner death. We see how not clean the water and ground are, and think of ways to make the water and ground clean again. Making the water and the ground clean takes a lot of money and a lot of time. People who made the water and ground not clean do not always want to spend money to make it clean again. Sometimes we can't find the people who made things not clean. Then other people have to spend money instead. There are important people who need us to make the water and ground clean as part of their job, and they have ways it must be done. Sometimes the important people and the people with the money do not agree on how to make water and ground clean again. Then my job is to help both people agree so that the clean up work gets finished and there is less sooner death in the world"
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