Writing a Local Geology Chapter

One of my students recently asked me for advice about her local geology chapter. She noted that her classmates had much longer chapters compared to hers. She believed that the others were writing too much, but at the same time recognized that she probably wasn't writing enough. This made me think back to what guidelines I followed during those times when I had to write my reports for field geology classes. These guidelines are listed below.

 

1. Finish your figures first.

Making figures and writing content are two very different tasks. In my experience, my brain just doesn't like it when I try to switch between them multiple times during a single session. It's very tiring to switch gears when you're trying to maintain focus. I suggest you make figures first, because then they are something to you can refer to as you write the text.

 

When making many figures that follow more-or-less the same template, such as the repetitive figures of each formation, I usually allow myself to listen to music with lyrics, or even have a video of my favorite series playing in the background. Doing this makes it a more pleasant task. When I start with the content writing, I switch to listening to instrumental music.

Conquering the Grad-Life Email Hydra

Okay, I kind of repeated the title of last week’s post. That’s because this post is mainly based on a 2017 article by Zach Hanlon, and in that article he compared his old email system to “slaying a hydra.” It’s been a year since I last read his article, so no, I did not get the hydra inspiration of the last post from him. But when I looked it up again for this post and noticed he also used the hydra reference, I decided to continue with it, especially since it’s remarkably accurate.

Anyway, if you want your email to look like this:

...then keep reading.

Conquering the Grad-life Hydra

The Hydra Torch

You just graduated. You feel great. Excited. Powerful. Like Hercules. Then, you set out on a challenge. You unwittingly decide to be a graduate student. Much like how Hercules went on a challenge to slay the Hydra. You swiftly tend to your classes, just as Hercules swiftly cut off the Hydra's head with a stroke of his sword. Unfortunately for Hercules, and for you, the challenge doesn't end there. In place of the severed head grows a multitude of other heads. These come in the form of a new job, your duties as a member of a laboratory group, your research, etc. What you and Hercules need are a new Hydra-fighting-tool-thing. A torch. This represents your brand-new redesigned productivity system, because the old one that you relied on just for school probably isn’t enough anymore. In fact, you probably weren’t thinking about productivity systems, since all you had to do was follow the highly structured education system: listen to your professor, do your homework, (cram) study for your exams.

There are many articles and videos online about different productivity systems, so this post is going to focus on helping you set up the best configuration for your workflow. This way you’ll have a clear image of the big picture while you experiment with different components of your system. Believe me, it’s probably easier this way instead of trying to find a solution when the problem is already threatening a certain aspect of your life. This blog will probably have follow-up posts tackling how you can use individual components at greater depth.

 

What's it for?

Before you start designing your productivity system, you first ought to realize what it's for. It's important to keep in mind what you need your productivity system to do for you while you explore its many different aspects. I think a good way to think about it is as a set of tools, that allow you to emulate the kind of structure to your life that you’re used to. The thing is, no one’s going to tell you what to do anymore. They’re just going to tell you what they want from you by a certain deadline. Your productivity system will help you organize your thoughts such that you can deal with them at the time you allot for them.

What does tableware have to do with geology?

Sometimes during lectures we tend to take a passive mindset. When the professor is speaking, we usually just lay back and listen. Sometimes if we're feeling a bit more attentive we try to do a bit more. Like take down notes, or try to listen as intently as possible to try and absorb as much as we can. Some people actually think that to do this is enough to get the most out of the lecture...but it probably isn't. 

Learning has to be done actively. When the prof. is giving his or her lecture, you need to actively think of what new information you're being provided with AND trying to sort it out in your head to see where it fits best with the knowledge you already have. Imagine having to maintain a filing cabinet with all your ideas. And your prof. is there handing out new documents of ideas every minute or so. It would be convenient (and somewhat passive) to just file everything you learned in that class under the top most drawer and then just pile on more stuff on it during your next class. But, that big pile of unsorted documents gets hard to find later on when you need them, say when you're studying for an exam. It's better to think of connections to previous knowledge that you already have, either filing them together or at least tagging them to be under the same topic. The more connections you make, the easier it will be to find that idea when a question about it pops up during your test. 

And these connections can be made with almost anything, even those that at first don't seem to be related. One good example I could think of is that moment of realization when learning about hardness in your basic geology or mineralogy class, and how it surprisingly relates to the material composition of tableware.

Common tableware. Photo by Daria Shevtsova from Pexels