Complete a Master's degree in Geology

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I submitted my thesis to the graduate school yesterday. That means I am 99.999999% done with my degree; it needs only to get the final stamp of approval that the formatting is correct, and then I’m home free! I’m looking forward to receiving my degree in December, 2008. Woo hoo!

I’m coming up on the end of Year Four, and my planned graduation date, but it hasn’t quite worked out. Due to some additional commitments I took on, I just won’t be able to finish writing my thesis by mid-March. Oh well! I’m deferring now to the summer term, aiming to submit my final thesis on July 1. The extra time is coming in handy, as my latest results suggest that I may completely re-organize how I was planning to organize what I’ve done for the thesis.

I’m also currently taking my final course, “Crises in Earth History.” Mass extinctions, meteorite impacts, volcanism, and more!

This year, I completed the daunting Tectonic Evolution of Western North America and began to devote more time to my thesis topic. I started doing some work in the microbiology lab to collect data and learned about different protocols and bacteria and ran my own experiments.

This year, I completed courses in Stratigraphy, Structural Geology, and Life in the Precambrian. I also started working more closely with my advisor on my research project, the investigation of computational biogenicity measures.

I just finished my first year of this degree. Still working on undergraduate courses, since I don’t have previous geology coursework to draw on. But now Mineralogy and Petrology are behind me (and hopefully, in my brain). Next year, on to Stratigraphy and Structural Geology!