Winding down summer

Being a perpetual student means that even now, in my mid-twenties, summer is still a distinctly different time of year from fall-winter-spring. In grade school, particularly high school, it meant a dramatic shift from busy, regulated days to empty, unsupervised days, and for me that usually meant a great deal of time wasted because I lacked the motivation or creativity to fill it in a wholesome or memorable way. Not to say that I didn't enjoy that wasted time; contrary to what adults always tried to convince me of, I do still fondly remember long lazy mornings when I could eat ice cream for breakfast and watch Lord of the Rings one disc after the other, with no one to look on in judgment. What amazes me though is that I still have a remarkable capacity for wasting time, and now that I'm not in high school anymore, there's a lot more regret involved when I tally up the hours that mysteriously disappeared with nothing to show for them.

The distinction of summer at this point in my life, while I'm a student but in that special unregulated way of grad school where work expands to fill all your time if you're not careful, is the complete lack of obligation toward classes. At the start of each quarter, I imagine that this will be the term of no classes, this will be the term where I finally focus on research and make leaps and bounds of progress. Then I laugh to stave off the rising panic as my schedule slowly but inexorably fills with seminars, field trips, classes I can't miss so I guess I'll just audit them as though that will protect me somehow, and other random duties. Soon the quarter is wrapping up and I'm looking over my task list and trying to cross things off with justifications like "well I totally thought about that" and "I did the first step of that and that's basically the same as getting it done." So at the close of spring in particular, summer looms as this magical 3-month stretch with no obligations to anyone, and only research to think of.

This summer glowed with a particularly optimistic light in the months leading up to it, because I had managed to score an internship that consisted of working on a chapter of my thesis. It was the perfect situation - make progress on research with no other distractions or obligations, and be held accountable for it so that lack of said progress does not go unnoticed (lack of accountability is one of the biggest differences between grad school and all other stages of school, and has been the hardest thing for me to adapt to). And, for once, I'd say that the goals I set back in May were accomplished by the end of August (with the exception of one particularly lofty one that I've decided to justify as having been unreasonable to begin with). I feel good about this of course, but in the back of my mind it's also a little depressing: I finally got the distraction- and obligation-free term I've been dreaming of, and it really did result in a lot of progress in my research, but I will in all likelihood never again have the opportunity to spend three months single-mindedly focused on one project. That's just not how life usually works.

Drawn from old photos of mine. Mixed-berry pie and sweet old Arrow circa 2008.

There's no use dwelling on negative thoughts right now, though, because it's still technically summer and I've been having an extraordinarily pleasant and peaceful couple of weeks since the end of my internship. Sam is still a few days away from finishing his summer internship, which by some stroke of luck is in Austin, so I've spent all of September so far in a beautiful rented loft in a cute neighborhood in arguably the most interesting city in Texas. Which brings me back to this tendency of mine to waste time that I should be making the most of. I've been determined not to let that happen here, and I've really amazed myself with how well I've stuck to that goal. And I've found that, no surprise, time off feels much more like a vacation when you actually do things with it.

This little stint in Austin feels different from a typical vacation in one important way: I "live" here. We're in a fully furnished granny unit with a full kitchen, so we can cook for ourselves whenever we feel bloated and sluggish from all the food trucks and BBQ. We have a car and know our way around pretty well so it doesn't take much planning to get somewhere and try something new. And most of all, we're here for long enough that there's no pressure to be doing something all the time. I suppose it helps that I visited a few weekends over the summer while I was in Houston, but for various reasons those visits were dominated by both of us camped out on the couch trying to get work done. The majority of fun, Austin-y things we've done have been in the last couple weeks, and yet I've still had so much time to myself to catch up on reading, go for short hikes, and do art. I've spent more time with my sketchbook in these couple weeks than I had all year. And I've been going to yoga classes. That's something I would never have thought to do on a vacation, but it's been so great. This brings me to another unique aspect of this 'vacation', which is that one of my good high school friends lives here, someone I hardly ever get to see anymore and miss dearly. I owe the yoga class idea to her, and it's no question that seeing her has made this place feel even more like home.

Maybe these are normal things to do on vacation for some people, but the great majority of my travel in the past few years has been geology-related, so this lovely mix of exploring a new place and taking time for relaxing and hobby-ing has been a unique and very refreshing experience. Of course, I'm a grad student, so there's been some time spent working as well, but not enough to detract from the sense that this is my time off before the craziness of fall quarter comes rushing back in.

Art markers are the latest & most portable addition to my collection of supplies, so learning to use them has been the focus of my art this summer. This is drawn from a random photo I found on Google (here). I think it looks much better if you don't compare to the original though...

We start the trip back to California on Friday. It's a long drive, and always feels that much longer for the many hours spent on straight, empty highway crossing the bulk of Texas. But somehow this time it doesn't look as long, maybe because we're coming from Austin rather than Houston, so we're taking the northern route through Flagstaff, or because we're stopping in Reno and Sacramento for a couple days at the end. As soon as we get back, this period of relaxation will vaporize - we're moving into our new place, I'm getting ready for my research group's Big Annual Meeting (not the actual acronym, but I think BAM has a nice ring to it), and fall quarter starts less than a week after we roll in. As usual, my intentions of having no class-like obligations fell through pretty much immediately, and travel obligations are sneakily eroding away at my weekends, but I'm still riding the wave of this summer's good progress and I feel optimistic that it will be a productive quarter. Even better, I have a lot of writing to accomplish in the next few months, and what better time of year to spend holed up inside with hot caffeinated beverages?

It turns out, markers are hard. And I'm out of practice with drawing in general. Back to basics - I used to love these exercises in high school, drawing one facial feature at a time. Much less pressure than a whole face.

2013

I have a pretty terrible memory, and last year around this time I decided to go through photos and Facebook and my Google calendar to think back on 2012.  I never finished but it was a fun exercise and reminded me of a lot of little things I might not have remembered otherwise, so here's my attempt for 2013:

January
On Jan 13, Sam and I left for a 5 week trip to New Zealand, for my primary field season on the Taranaki coast.  Sam learned to drive on the left side of the road, we sighted many pukekos, enjoyed glorious coastal views and weather, and only had one flat tire.  It would be a full blog post to describe all the wonderful experiences of that trip.

February
The first half of this month was still in New Zealand.  We celebrated our own version of the local holiday Waitangi Day (which celebrates the founding treaty of New Zealand and delegation of rights and land to the Maori) by visiting a native bird reserve, eating crayfish (actually rock lobster) caught by local friends, and catching the best beachside sunset of the trip.  We flew home on the 18th and I spent the rest of the month catching up with folks and organizing rock samples.  Nora and I spent a very awkward evening at a PBK reception that was clearly geared toward undergrads.

March
My parents visited briefly, Sam and I went to his field area for two short days and celebrated our 4 year anniversary at Pinnacles.  Then I spent half the month in quals prep and the other half in a "deepwater basics" short course through Shell.  I got to see the amazing St Anthony Falls Laboratory in Minneapolis, which was an exercise in surviving near-zero weather after 7+ years adapting to coastal California climate.  My birthday was a "travel day" in the short course, driving from Davis to San Francisco with no other obligations, so Sam met me in SF and took me to a wonderful sushi dinner (and I got to try out my gift, a homemade car pillow I "invented" on a road trip but never expected to see materialized).

Trying out the Biolite stove with a carbolicious meal (pasta + instant potatoes + alfredo sauce)

Underside of the Jurassic Tank at SAFL

April
This month was a frenzy of quals preparation, with all the delights of paperwork and scheduling.  My calendar has a lot of things in all caps, like PRINT POSTER and FIND DON, which I think sums up the month perfectly.  The one wonderful highlight, which in retrospect was such a good decision even if it felt risky at the time, was a 3 day break for a low-key backpacking trip in Henry Coe.

May
More quals prep, and the exam itself, which I took the afternoon of the 20th.  Sam spent the first week of May doing field work with Gus; I was sort of afraid to be left by myself during such a stressful time, but it turned out to be a good situation since it gave me the freedom to work long hours and eat weird things at random times without worrying about how it affected him.  I managed to keep relatively calm in the days leading up to the exam, and things went pretty well and I was so happy to get it over with, but I still felt pretty lackluster about it.  I'm not sure it's possible to feel really good about a qualifying exam.
I don't think I have a single photo from this month.

June
Commence the post-quals slump!  I accomplished approximately nothing during this month.  The month kicked off with a croquet party up on the hill, in which Sam became the proud temporary curator of the Kebet Stone.  Sam was busy with bachelor party duties for his friend's upcoming wedding, and I went up to Trinity Lake for a family reunion.  I expected to spend that week lazing around at the lake or maybe going for a hike.  Instead I went tubing behind my uncle's boat and went flying in the tiniest plane I've ever been in, a glorious yellow canvas 2-seater prop plane.  The pilot, my uncle-by-marriage's brother, is an experienced stunt pilot, so we spent a good portion of the flight in various states of non-horizontal.

Experimenting with gel medium & pallet knife

July
The month started out with a beautiful wedding in Sacramento, which I got to experience in a pretty great way - as the girlfriend of the best man.  I was there for a lot of the pre-wedding prep and excitement, and felt close to the couple, but didn't have to do much of anything.  Obviously being the maid of honor for my best friend's wedding in 2012 was better in every way, but there's something to be said for being just a guest.  Two weeks after the first wedding, we both got to be just guests at Sara and Gabe's glorious wedding in Reno, which was extra great for me because hey, Reno time!  Back in California, I started co-advising an undergrad with some field work near Pigeon Point Lighthouse.  Then, to round out a busy but wonderful month, at the last minute Theresa invited me to field assist in Montana, one of my favorite places in the world.

August
Sam happened to be visiting family in Montana while we were up there for field work, so he spent a day with us and got sucked in to the money hole that is the Patagonia outlet store in Dillon.  Theresa and I skipped home a couple days early after it became clear that the rocks just weren't there.  Our research group spent a few days knee-deep in trace fossils via an ichnology short course by Pemberton and a day trip to the Black Diamond Mine in the East Bay.

September
Sam spent a good portion of the month out of town, with a pre-birthday mountain biking trip to Downieville and a long week doing field work.  Which meant that when a certain tiny puppy needed babysitting for a day, I got her all to myself (but graciously shared her with Nora ;)).  Then it was suddenly Fall, with all the craziness that comes with that season - SPODDS meeting in Davis, recruiting season at Stanford, start of classes.  In what was hopefully my last quarter of taking class for credit, I signed up for Sedimentary Petrography and Matlab, and TA'd for my advisor's Sedimentary Basins class.

Stick Steve's inaugural field trip

October
Always my favorite month because it's true fall weather and of course, Halloween!!  I'm so lucky to live in proximity to a rich neighborhood that, interestingly, goes more nuts decorating for Halloween than Christmas.  It was a busy month at school as recruiting dragged on and classes ramped up (well, class - I dropped Matlab after it stopped being useful), so I did less decorating for Halloween than I might have, but we did manage to have a repeat of last year's pumpkin carving party - which turned out not to include pumpkin carving at all, probably because the Free Recruiting Schwag Art Contest sapped everyone's creative energy ;).  I finally visited my brother in Oakland, when my parents came through on a birthday trip for my mom, and realized that if you live in a 4th floor penthouse apartment with three private balconies, Oakland can be pretty great.

November
This was Sam's frantic quals prep month, but instead of being the good girlfriend and doing anything possible to make his life easier, I found myself swamped with mineral separation work that I should have done over the summer.  A lot of late nights for both of us in November.  I had two beautiful highlights though: I led a make-up field trip for a couple students in the sed basins class, and went on a short weekend trip to Gualala to see some surprisingly great deep-water rocks, with better weather than any of us could have hoped for.  Despite the fact that our roof officially started leaking 2 days before his exam date, Sam (in the words of his advisor) rocked his quals the day before Thanksgiving break.  We had separate turkey dinners with respective families and for the first time I can remember, I truly enjoyed a non-traditional stuffing (I mean really, why mess with the world's most perfect dish).

Syncline emerging from the tide - never gets old!

Cycles at Gualala

December
True to form, this was a bit of a crazy month.  Things were busy already with a final report and presentation for my only class; on top of that I managed to squeeze in 3 long days of lab work in Santa Cruz, which was less sleep-depriving than usual but still resulted in a diet high in donuts for the weekend.  I took a half day off to recover from that, then spent the rest of the week commuting back and forth from SF for the annual AGU conference.  I rounded that off with what might have been my very last final exam (I feel like I've said that a half dozen times in my life by now, so it's hard to know if it's really true) and spent a week recovering from the quarter and pushing through some data reduction before Sam and I headed east again for more family time.  As usual I didn't do any of the work I planned to do over break, but despite this being one of my shorter Reno visits, it felt like a legit vacation.  Of course Sam and I both got sick within a day of each other.  We're basically better now but I lost my voice for 2 days, which made the final visits with family and friends a little strange.

One realization I've had lately is how little art I did in 2013, despite my desire and goal to do more.  So if I have a resolution for 2014, it's to spend more time with a pencil, paintbrush, or marker in hand, and significantly less time online.

Hope everyone had a wonderful holiday and found some time to look back on the last year before charging into the next one!