Lot's Wife Edition 6 2015

28
SCIENCE & ENGINEERING
By Timothy Newport
Broken Hill Geological
Field Camp 2015
Or How I Learned to
Stop Worrying and
Love the Rocks
Full disclosure: I fucking hate rocks.
I don’t like looking at them, I don’t like thinking about
them, I don’t like learning about them.
If I could get a card that would allow me to avoid any and
all rocks for the entirety of my existence on this tragically
rocky planet, I would gladly trade several digits (monetary or
anatomical) for one.
Which puts me in an awkward position of being a
Geosciences major.
I’ve stumbled into this ironic hell by means of shortsighted
subject choices, trying too many times a subject I
was fated to fail, and just plain-old laziness. Geology seemed
the easiest subject to major in, or at the least the most fun
(thanks Marion Anderson), so I stuck with it through to 3rd
year.
Barely scraping through 2nd year and first semester this
year, I was utterly resigned to banging my head against a
wall until graduation. The subject matter bored me to tears,
the practicals were difficult and confusing, and I just didn’t
care about my grades. If it weren’t for great lab partners and
occasional field trips, I probably would have just dropped out
altogether.
I chose my 3rd years subjects by the following criteria:
what combination of units allows me to graduate the fastest?
Amongst the choices made was "ESC3180: Field Mapping", a
winter semester subject composed of a 3 week field camp in
the desert, looking at rocks.
"Sure, whatever," I thought. I didn’t care what I did, as long
as I didn’t have to come back for another semester.
The day of reckoning arrives, and I show up to Robert