Fostering Imagination

As a parent, it is my job to teach my children about the world. As a scientist, I believe it is critical to be honest, encouraging education that is straightforward and fact based. I prefer to give full disclosure on tricky subjects such as where babies come from, what hamburger is made of, and what happens when you die. Even when it comes to discipline, I don’t like to cut corners for the sake of avoiding a meltdown. For example, when my toddler is desperate to play for 10 more minutes with the toy train, I won’t fib that the library is about to close. Instead, I tell the truth – it’s late and mama needs to start cooking dinner. Or why tell her that the cookies are all gone when really she isn’t allowed to have another one? That’s delaying inevitable (and important) lessons.

And yet, I believe there is tremendous value in make-believe. I do what I can to show my children that the world is indeed a magical place. Maria Montessori cautioned adults from undervaluing the tinkering and nonsense that young children invest themselves in, explaining that “play is the work of childhood.” Here are a few ways that I try to foster imagination in my 3 year old daughter:

Hiking through the gorges in Ithaca, we cross over many beautiful, old stone bridges each week. I like to remind Evee that trolls live under some bridges, and may demand tolls from people who want to cross. Sometimes my husband or I will pretend to be the troll, and demand a bauble or gesture from Evee such as a flower, pebble or kiss on the cheek. This always gets her giggling, and often ends in requests for the troll to chase her.

Craning to see the troll under the bridge

Evee and I also love to speculate about the magical places where fairies live. When I come across something like a small stone bench, birdbath, or outdoor nook walled in by ivy or a trellis, I tell Evee about how garden fairies are attracted to places like this. We discuss what we can do to cultivate garden fairies in our own yard. Water fairies are hiding in the lush, dripping moss growing around the waterfalls where we hike , and we always squint into the sun trying to catch a glimpse.

Our bedtime chapter book right now is The BFG by Roald Dahl. Last night we read the chapter where the BFG takes Sophie to dream country to catch dreams in his net to bring to children. This morning, Evee listened for the invisible dreams zooming around our backyard. She caught them in her net, and we bottled and labeled the dreams that she caught. For the next few nights, we’ll make a show of releasing one of the good dreams from the jar before she goes to bed. But under no circumstances will we ever release the Trogglehumper, which is a terrifying nightmare.

Chasing dreams in the backyard

We caught a Winksquiffler, Phizzwizard and even a nefarious Trogglehumper

There’s so much magic in our world that we have yet to discover, and I don’t want my children to close their minds off from any of it. While spending time bartering with trolls may not seem as practical as practicing ABCs or even getting comfortable on her new bike, these exercises in imagination give her the insight and the courage to explore beyond the scope of contemporary knowledge or known science to stumble upon new ideas and hidden wonders. I hope my girls will never outgrow silly, imaginative and magical things like chasing dreams and cultivating fairies.

 

The Road to My Thesis

My graduate degree. What can I say? Where do I begin?

I should start with how I graduated from Kent with a B.S. in Geology in 2010 after the best summer field camp of my life. But before I can even say that, I need to say that getting through college at the undergraduate level was a long, bumpy road. I triumphed over failing out of school, went from academic probation to dean’s list, learned when to say no to parties with my roommates, and really enjoyed what I was studying. Geology was what I chose as a major so that I could travel in the future. By the time I graduated, geology was in my blood and I had a solid core group of friends who were like family. I couldn’t imagine doing anything else.

Ladies in the field!

My field camp family!

I spent some time in Utah, doing undergrad research with my field camp professor measuring magnetic susceptibility in laccoliths, right before I graduated. I LOVED it. It was an amazing trip and I really pushed myself hiking. That’s when I decided I wanted to get my Masters degree.

 

That tiny town is where we stayed in Utah!

I originally wanted to study under my field professor in igneous petrology and volcanology, but he was unable to take students. Since my undergrad GPA was low, I took a couple post-undergrad courses to boost my GPA while I went through the process of applying to grad school. It took a year for me to start as a graduate student and I had to pay for the first year myself. I took on way way too much for my first semester as a grad student. I took 4 courses (though one class I didn’t need to take… but I really wanted to) and was dealing with a lot of personal life changes. When my engineering geology professor asked me to be his student, I wasn’t sure I wanted to. I wasn’t sold on engineering.

After talking to a few close friends and family, I decided to not let hard work deter me from this potential path. So, I became a geotechnical engineering masters student. I was one in many of his students, in fact, I shared my first office with two guys who were further along in the program (and I graduated first!) and started the program with 3 other masters students and one PhD student. When he emailed the list of potential thesis topics, my eyes spotted one and only one sentence. “Investigation of a landslide outside Cedar City, Utah” The very next morning, I ran to his office to claim that topic before anyone else could. Before I could even say I wanted that topic, he asked me if I would do it. He knew I had been there before and thought of me as he put it on the list.

From there, I had to plan a trip for my adviser and I to see the landslide ASAP. It was super stressful. He wanted us to fly out after his classes ended on Monday and be back before his classes started on Wednesday. I booked our flights and hotel and we arrived in Las Vegas at 8 pm on Monday. Now, this was my first time driving through Vegas.. and there was construction on Route 15.. long story short, I got us lost and what would have been a 2.5 hour drive turned into 6 hours. Add the extra hour we gained crossing into Mountain Time and we checked into the hotel at 3 am. But the next morning.. We saw this:

A panoramic view of the Cedar Canyon in Utah, with the landslide (The tiny road is the road I stood on in the next photo)

I walked right up to it!

It was incredible. Breathtaking. A huge mass of destruction that was my thesis project. Approximately 1.5 million cubic yards of material that moved down slope in the canyon, taking the road with it. I couldn’t wait to start working and understanding what happened here. I planned on digging in over winter break, to try to get data before they started repairing the road. Luckily for me, I was able to convince Tommy to be my field assistant. He arranged a couch surfing situation for us and was a real trooper about the tiny rental car and walking around unstable ground. 🙂

A huge boulder.. Tommy for scale

Trekking around the toe of the landslide.. Tommy for scale

We encountered a few really cold days.. I got stuck on a road cut that I crawled up to get discontinuity data (I’m not afraid of heights.. just falling off) and Tommy had to talk me down.. But 100+ measurements and buckets of samples later and we were able to take a bit of a break before flying home.

 

We only stayed one night, but it was a lot of fun! We returned home and I started preparing my proposal for my committee. By the time spring semester started, I was ready to defend my thesis proposal and get to applying for research money. My thesis committee was my adviser, my field professor, and the department chair. Luckily, I successfully defended my proposal and received quite a lot of money to finish my field work. I drove for my third and last time to my site and brought my sister with me.

Rach had never been so far west before and it was funny to see her experience the west in the car. She was hoping to see tornadoes in Kansas (I was not) and told me that the Rockies were so much bigger than in the pictures (funniest Rach quote of the trip). It wasn’t all work, work, work to get there. We detoured a bit to see Bryce Canyon before getting to the hotel in Cedar City.

We spent 10 days collecting more data and samples from the landslide. Rach had a harder time in the field than Tommy did… she fell off the side of a little cliff and scared the crap out of me, with only a large scrape on her arm as a battle wound. We got to climb on the landslide and see the head scarp, while UDOT was fixing the road damage.

Rach is the tiny person next to the boulder!

An example of discontinuities that I measured (Tommy’s car in the background)

We put all my sample buckets in the car and headed home. I had a lot of laboratory work to do. I completed 8 tests (multiple times) on both soil and rock samples to have more data to analyze. The lab work took about a year to finish, since I was sharing machines with other students and sometimes had to wait to be trained on a machine before using it.. There was a lot of frustration during this time. There were times I thought I was done and could start my analysis and my adviser would suggest that I do one more round of tests.. Ugh. I get irritated just thinking about that.

Once I started the analysis part, using Rocscience’s SLIDE program, I realized that I had no clue what I was doing. The program wasn’t exactly user-friendly. Thankfully, a former PhD student of my adviser’s came to help me figure out how to start my analysis using the data I collected. He was a HUGE help. Of course, it was later on that I discovered that I used the wrong data set in my analysis and I had to start over.. But that happens to a lot of students. By the end of summer, I handed my adviser a first full draft of my thesis and I felt pretty damn good.

When the first round of edits came back to me, I sobbed. I thought my adviser thought I was the worst writer, that I was an idiot who had no idea what I was saying.. all the worst possible things I could think of. Unfortunately, I moved out of state at the end of summer, so any errors he discovered in my work required me to drive all the way back to fix on the lab computer. I did that multiple times. Four rounds of edits and my adviser finally gave me the go-ahead to submit my thesis to my committee. I printed out 4 copies of my 210 page thesis (one sided, to the exasperation of the department chair) and scheduled my thesis defense.

 

It’s a hefty tome..

I was a nervous wreck about defending. I had spoke about my thesis before at conferences, but this was my defense. They were there to ask me tough questions and make sure I covered everything I could. I didn’t sleep much the night before. I memorized my presentation and even reread my thesis before I defended. Luckily I did, because my adviser asked me about a section he added to my thesis. Overall, the questions weren’t that bad and I knew more than I thought I did. I passed my defense with minor edits and finally was able to graduate.

So, 4 years after deciding to get my masters degree, I finally walked across that stage to get an empty folder. 🙂 I don’t think I will go after my PhD yet.. I think it’s time to put my education to some use. All-in-all it was a fun and exhausting experience, with ups and downs, but actually finishing was the happiest moment I had so far. I still can’t believe I did it!

-A

Library Book Sale!

Part of the perks of working at a library are first dibs at the bi-annual book sale!

I first want to comment on my new job at the library.  Having worked in the academic library world for the past 2 years while I was at grad school I got used to the particular way that those libraries functioned… really specific requests, reference librarians being an absolute necessity, having literally any piece of information- no matter how obscure – available at my fingertips, an extensive I-Share network, and students upon students all researching strange and fascinating things.  Not to mention my job there was incredibly different than what I do now.  At the RHL I was sorting Inter-Library Loan materials, cataloging, processing, and having a hand in just about every function of the library – from training, to ordering, media, layout, and programs.  Since moving into the public library sector, I see a lot less of the specific and much more of the general.  General public, general programs, general reading.  I no longer do any cataloging or processing;  I no longer have a hand in training.  I do get to create some programs, have a say in my department for layout,     and ordering.  It’s quite a transition for me and has been an interesting learning experience.

Don’t get me wrong, I really enjoy my job.  There’s a lot of variety, networking, opportunities, and professional growth.  I’ve met a lot of great people – both coworkers and patrons.  I’m really enjoying the location and all the newness of living on the East coast.  I will get tired of dealing with the patrons at some point.

One of the positives, though, is being integrated in this new community and taking advantage of all there is to offer.  Like… the Library Book Sale!!

I picked up so much!  I spent around 7 dollars total and got 2 full boxes of books, including almost 2 dozen for the lovely little Evee!  A baking book for Ash, the nearly-full collection of Gossip Girl series for one dollar (my guilty pleasure and it’s only missing 2 books!), a nice Better Home and Gardens cookbook, some teen novels, some mystery novels, classics, a book for my mom, a couple popular audiobooks, 2 Doctor Who audiobooks, a NJ travel book, and so much more!

My fiction scores!

 

Say what???

The (almost) full collection!

 

Special Edition Gossip Girl TV show tie in covers (they’re posters!)

 

Shh… don’t show Evee 🙂