worlds foremost architectural geologist

this week is all about reading papers. 2 for tomorrow morning's geomorph seminar, 4 for thursday morning's tectonics and climate seminar, and another 2 or so on my personal list.

i'm having a hard time letting go of winter-break, even though my school-related workload is basically perfect. it's easy for me to see how the lifestyle of a slacker ski-bum would be pretty enjoyable... at least for a little while. i've always been a little jealous of some of my friends who lead that life... but i don't think i could really do it. ...or i could, but i'd feel like i was missing something.

i was recently discussing (well, via e-mails) something related with a friend about the fact that we (and anyone else who was born between late-january '79 and mid-february '80) are rams according to the chinese zodiac. the key point of the idea is that rams are supposedly artful, stylish and emotional people who should avoid science because our personalities are ill-suited to researching such things. at times i agree with this. there are occasions when i curse the day i chose geology over architecture, but they are few and far between. the real reason i like this field (and it's pretty much the same reason my friend has given) is that i find science is more difficult than art or design. it's a challenge to apply my mind to problems that can be infuriatingly complex or just confusing and come up with some answer (or at least hypothesis) to explain a solution, especially if it's a solution that my spatio-visually oriented mind can come up with that short-cuts all the in-between steps of calculation (which isn't always a good thing; i usually have to go back and explain out how i figured something out, which is often harder than just reaching the answer). i've spoken of this in the past, but it's just been reiterated to me (via an observation that i've never heard anyone but myself say out loud) that structural geology is essentially the study of the architecture of mountains. architecture can be defined as the complex or carefully designed structure of something. i hereby dub myself the worlds first (and foremost by default) "architectural geologist".

~t