As benefits the last week of the semester, it’s been a busy time. I submitted a thesis proposal and now I get to wait until July when they tell if the project has been approved. I also took an exam today, which had my new least favorite exam structure, where we have to write two essays, prompts previously unseen, each a thousand words, in two hours. With citations. I don’t think my essays were very good, but at least they weren’t very bad, and only a little bit too short. Also, in accordance with nearly every other essay I’ve ever written, I was slightly ticked at how broad the questions were, and instead of properly arguing for or against, I went with a well in some situations this is useful and in some it isn’t, context is Important dammit slant. I hate over-generalizations (most of the time) and nuance is important. Even if I am actively running out of time, we’re going to be as precise about this as I can. It makes me miss college math exams something fierce; six problems, 15-20minutes per problem, two hours, and by the end of it your hair is smoking very gently, but it’s either correct or it’s not and it all hinges on how many minus signs you dropped.

I was mollified by the fact they gave us pizza afterwards, and little spiel about how far we’ve come, and the importance of clear communication with our thesis advisors. My whole year showed up, practically, and we all milled around for about two hours visiting and saying goodbyes to the people who are leaving soon. I manged to give away most the origami that has been accumulating under my bed all year, which will make packing in a few days significantly easier (nothing to squish).

It was lovely weather today, mid sixties, patchily and sunny and lightly breezy, so I went scrambling up the mountains.

It was a lovely view and a delightful scramble over some boulders, and I found a mysterious big metal pipe, and a rock with a perfectly cylindrical hole in it nearby.

I think the pipe used to be some kind of avalanche warning system; the fact that the base is perfectly level like that implies that’s important somehow, but nothing I can think of explains that auxiliary piston. I do love finding weird rusty objects in the middle of nowhere, the mystery always delights me. The cylindrical hole cracked me up because it means that someone took a little core sample here at some point, probably for age or magnetism analysis. There’s a bunch of similar holes all over the valley because of the high density of geologists training baby geologists how to take and label the samples properly, which means if you go on a hike nearly anywhere with my father he will delightedly point at the holes and claim they were formed by rock worms. And despite several years of geology, I am my father’s daughter, and whenever I see holes like this my first thought is always, rock worms.

I’m glad to have been here, and I’m looking forward to being home again soon. I hope everyone has enjoyed a slightly sideways trip through grad school.

Regular updates are suspended until I’m back in school in September-ish. Until then, enjoy the summer!