Through the eyes of a geologist

When university starts, you both embrace the independency (like me) and miss your pets like crazy, or you’re badly homesick and want to go home at every opportunity. It’s normal to be either. I was so immersed into university, I somehow forgot to be homesick. However, everybody is different. Something I found recently was that National Express coaches do journeys from £6! I travel between Colchester-Leicester-Nottingham on a regular basis and have found that by far, this is the cheapest way to travel. So if homesickness is something you’re worrying about if you’re starting university this September, home is just one journey away. Other tips I have found along my university journey: The laundrette can be costly in halls. It’s fine to wear jeans for a few days right? Hang them back up in your wardrobe! Can’t afford a gym membership? Invest in a rucksack and walk everywhere. Put all your baked bean tins on your back from your weekly shop, and you’ll be working up a sweat in no tim...

Budgeting! Before university, it’s the one word we hear a thousand times from our parents! Commuting, textbooks, food, the list is endless. Among many other things, these need to be considered into our budgets. Some students are really lucky they can rely on the bank of mum and dad for either a weekly allowance or a relief loan for when times are tough. This blog post will be the first of two that hopes to show you how you don’t need to budget, you just need to be sensible! It will contain my top tips and latest knowledge of the best deals out there to benefit students and make the most of university on a small amount of money. Everything I’m about to say, I either currently do or have done at some point in the past 3-4 years. My major concern before starting university was if I was to run out of money. I am very independent and will not ask my parents for money even if it is the last resort. Instead, make sure you’ve done research into the accounts the banks have to offer to ensu...

Jurassic Park 4, now released as Jurassic World first made New Scientist headlines in April 2013 as the director stated that all dinosaurs present in the movie would be featherless like the previous releases. We now know that this wasn't always the case, Velociraptors are one of the species we now know to have had feathers. As a geologist with a keen interest in palaeobiology, the viewing of the film was a necessity! Although it may be a movie, it essentially gives the majority of the audience an insight into how far research has come by studying and interpreting fossils. It’s important for others to learn about the past in order to understand the concepts of the future. One of my favourite lines of the movie was when the owner Simon Masrani states, “Jurassic World exists to remind us how very small we are.” I completely agree with this, in fact it made me pause for a few minutes. As humans, we tend to be very self-centred. We have no predators and we control the food...

I am now a fully trained University of Leicester Student Blogger for the Geology department - yay! My blogging hobby obviously came in handy and what's better than doing something you love and getting paid for it?! You can find me here: Jo M  and you can read my first blog post  here " Hello, my name is Jo and I'm a fourth-year MGeol Geology student who has recently returned from my year abroad at the University of Arizona. I hope to give you an insight into the life of a geology student, the challenges we face, the opportunities that arise and the roller coaster we ride come graduation." If you fancy reading my university-related blog posts, you can even subscribe. I aim to blog weekly, whilst staying as active as I can on this blog too.

June is an exciting month. Why? Well let me tell you more about  British Exploring’s #ExploreforMore Geocaching Adventure. When I came across the British Exploring Society a few years ago, I was at the beginning of my degree and struggling to find work experience. I began searching the internet night and day, in the hope that I could find an opportunity, any opportunity, to persue my education outside of the university setting. I applied to be a volunteer at Hawaii's Observatory, contacting local quarries, as well applying for BGS's G-BASE opportunities. With little geology experience, I knew I didn't really stand a chance against other students whom were coming to the end of their degrees and had more fieldwork experience. This is when I came across the British Exploring Society. The fieldwork expeditions they were offering sounded amazing. Adventures all over the world, but just one problem, the price! Souly relying on Student Finance to live, I knew that I wouldn't b...

It's been a roller coaster of a ride, however I'm glad to be home. I've undertaken fieldwork in phenomenal areas of Arizona I could only dream of seeing. It has been a once in a life opportunity and hugely grown as a individual, not only personally but professionally too. I've been told that I will undergo culture shock now that I've moved back to the UK. Although at current, it feels as though I've slotted back nicely into my previous wet and windy (which I have to say I love!) life. It's been a hectic few weeks but I'm raring to go! Expect to see plenty more blogs coming soon.

Saturday's field trip began with an hour long journey south towards the town of Tombstone . This is a place I've always wanted to visit and to undertake fieldwork at this location too, kills two birds with one stone. Tombstone is a historic town of the southwest and was known for its regular gunfighting. Driving through the town felt as though I was in a completely different place altogether. It was like driving through a time machine, back a hundred or so years to the time of horse and carts. This trip was focused around the Walnut Gulch experimental watershed just a few minutes drive from Tombstone's centre. We was joined by Dr Mary Nichols who works for the USDA Southwest Watershed Research Center who was able to give the class a detailed insight into the setting of the watershed, tours of the flumes and data which we aim to manipulate to heighten our understanding of bed load transport. Walnut Gulch experimental watershed is an area covering 60 million hectares of b...