For my geochemistry paper, I have had to worry for the first time in a long time about: plagiarism. See, with the crystal samples given to us by Dr. R I have no idea what the locality they were taken from was like at all. I've certainly been to Valles Caldera enough times, but never have I taken any samples of my own from the caldera's formations, and with his published papers he has given us to use as reference, it's had to say anything without having to paraphrase and cannibalize heavily from his writing. My interpretations are entirely my own but everything from the background and methodology to the major sources I am citing are all heavily borrowed from Dr. R's papers.
The ten grains we successfully analyzed match Dr. R's conclusions that the 1.61 Ma Otowi Member we are studying originated from an open magma system. The difficulty for me now is how to balance respect for my teacher's publications with further reading I've done and my general ignorance of the member beyond its geographical location. Dr. R suggested in the papers he gave us that "sweated" wall rock was principally responsible for the open system dynamics we seem to see, but I've come across a few other papers suggesting that an injection of magma spurred the eruption and contributed to the variance we see in rubidium-strontium isotope ratios to suggest an open system to us. Now I have to pull all of it together into a draft Dr R is willing to buy into, and still not see enough of his own papers to blow a whistle on the derivative writing I currently have.
Meanwhile, my entomology project is significantly less demanding and although I realized I ought to start writing 9 days before the due date (April 23), I have more than half of it already done. I've drawn and written three quick comics (he asked for strips but I don't know what to make of that), a movie review of Mothra vs. Godzilla (1964) and four website reviews (just a paragraph each). The website reviews were surprisingly fun, and I got to talk about the Prehistoric Planet Store and the USDA Insect Sound Reference Library. Mainly though, any excuse to watch a Godzilla movie and get points on an assignment for it is ideal.
The next project I'll have to undertake is my Colorado Plateau poster. I still haven't settled on what I would like to write on. Part of me wants to deal with the boundary of the Interior Seaway and the Sevier Orogenic Belt. The other part of me wants to go nuts with the inter-fingering of the Mancos Shale and the Drip Tank Member, which are really impressive just due to the dynamics of the shoreline of the Great Interior Seaway. I'm not sure what I'll do, but I ought to choose quickly. I just don't want to fall into the trap of using my professor's publications for this assignment as well, though Dr. L has some really interesting papers dealing specifically with the Cretaceous...
Overall, not a lot is going on in my life besides writing and getting ready for finals when the time comes. These papers and projects are a huge part of my grade though (equivalent to a full exam in Entomology) so I really want to get them done and done right. Meanwhile the weather just gets better and better here and I'm stuck inside typing away when every instinct worth listening to in me wants to head outside and take a literal breather. Life goes on, and I'll definitely have the summer so things could be better but I'm doing really well as my second year nears to its conclusion and I'm really proud of that.
Photo Credit
Ron Blakey, Northern Arizona University Geology. "Paleogeographic map of the Late Cretaceous (75 Ma)". Link
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