Ahh, blogs

Reading other blogs is fun. Especially when there are a few people like me out there. Grad students with the normal grad student problems. Ahh. Not that these problems are good. But it is so nice to realize that you aren't the only person in the world with your problems.

Today was "Taco Thursday", where a few of us girls in the department (currently only 3 of us) get together to sort of study for comps. The other two girls will have "normal" comps, meaning the standard geology comp from the department here. I, however, will not. I will have a comp more directed to my current work. In a lot of ways this is really, really nice. At least I know what to study, and I have a much better idea of the type of questions I will be asked. In the study group we're just going over a general undergrad textbook right now. Erin is using Geology by Tarbuck and Lutgens, and Trish and I are using Earth by Tarbuck and Lutgens. They are essentially the same books. They're pretty good. We're going to start going over some of the concepts in my favorite book, Plate Tectonics. I want the new edition, and I'll probably get it in August. That was my favorite geology class is college, which I took from Condie. It was very comprehensive and I learned a lot. It'll be super fun to use that book to study for comps. The big problem is that the material in that book won't be covered on my comps, at least on a large scale. So I'm doing this studying for no reason, except that I love the material and would love to have it more cemented in my head. The books I'm using for my comp studying are about the geologic and glacial history of Grand Teton National Park and the settlement history of the valley. Also good books (I don't have links for them right this second), but a little less comprehensive. I need to know how glaciers work, why the Tetons are there, what settlement was like, and how the vegetation of North America has changed in the past 5000 or so years. Pretty specific.