Taking a Strange New Class

The dilemma

It was one week and two days ago. I had casually emailed a professor about classes I could take that were related to ecology. He responded quickly, mentioning that it would be a good idea to take Biology 210 to see if the field would be something I’d like to pursue.

The first problem: Biology 210 is only offered in the winter, and it requires a science lab course as a prerequisite.

The second problem: I was not enrolled in any science lab courses.

A lab course at Carleton includes typical classroom lessons twice a week, and a four-hour block once a week in which students engage in hands-on research. I faced the inevitable: I would have to suck it up, drop a class, and switch into a lab. But which one? Physics? Chemistry? Biology?

Geology?

Growing up, my mother never failed to express her love for Geology to me. After taking classes in college, she could list the geologic time scale like the back of her hand: Cambrian, Ordovician, Silurian, Devonian… (she ended up majoring in English, though? That sort of made it less persuasive). I thought it was silly. It was the study of rocks. Just rocks. Who cares about rocks?

But with the necessity of taking a lab course bearing down on me, and no real desire to sit inside a laboratory for four hours straight, the attraction of the words Introduction to Field Geology and “lab time will be spent outdoors” became too much to resist. I clicked “register”.

I soon found myself in a classroom with thirty other students listening to the professor, Clint (who has a PhD in limestone, which I didn’t even know was possible), talk about the formation of the Earth, tectonic plates, creature fossils, and how sediment turns to rock. After breaking for lunch, we put on our helmets and safety orange to prepare for our first weekly field trip of the course.

The lab

A thirty-minute drive took us to our first location. Actually, that’s not true. We stopped once on the side of the highway for Clint to point out a hill that he found very interesting. A thirty-minute drive took us to our first real location: a cliffside made up of layers of sandstone, shale, and limestone. We took measurements and wrote data in our field notebooks while Clint explained the properties of each material. It was difficult to concentrate, though, because there was no shade and I had forgotten my sunscreen. Tip: if you take Field Geology, don’t do this.

We eventually made our way to a much more pleasant creek in the forest. The air was cool, and Clint waded through the water to reach an impressively majestic cliff of white limestone. Here we saw little pockets in the rock, which Clint revealed were the burrows of tiny, ancient sea creatures buried under layers of stone. It was amazing.

I realized as we were driving back to campus, filled with admiration as well as exhaustion, that there was an air of camaraderie here that wasn’t present in my other classes yet. I guess being outside with a small group of people for a long time is really effective at creating bonds. Just like species-rich water is really effective at bonding sediment into sedimentary rock.

Some advice

If you find yourself in a similar position to me, wide-eyed and wondering which intro lab course to take, I wholeheartedly recommend taking Field Geology. Or don’t, because I’m sure the other courses are fun too, and college is meant for you to take whichever courses you want, gosh darn it!

But still, take Field Geology.

Now if you’ll excuse me, I have some rocks to go look at.

Inigo (he/him/his) is trying very hard to turn interests in subjects like film, English, and psychology into a manageable course load. Originally from Somerville, Massachusetts, he can often be found running in the Cowling Arboretum (and getting passed by everyone on the cross-country team) or rock climbing at the bouldering cave in the evening. He loves Carleton’s walkability: it didn’t even matter that he forgot to bring his bike to campus. He considers bad horror movies to be the ultimate form of entertainment.