Being a senior in college is eerily similar to being a senior in high school. Burnout is encroaching on the horizon far too early, like nighttime during the winter (4pm sunset as I write this), and everyone is asking about what we want to do after graduation, jobs, grad school, apartments. And most vividly is the reminder from alumni that our all-nighters and missing the M2 (a free bus with school ID that many of us cross-enrolled at MIT take) will not matter in a few months. We will be taking away the good times of having friends only a walk away and opportunities more than anything else. Just like back in high school, they are right.

When I first got to Harvard, I remember feeling jealous of my peers who had seen the world and went on vacations with their families every year when mine had never left the country (or the midwest, for that matter). The only reason I saw another state for a long time was because we lived on the river bordering them. We were landlocked and running a roadside motel as a family business, there was never any time or money to travel and similarly for my peers growing up. This gave me angst, especially coming to an institution where so many kids were of different financial situations and opportunities. I remember venting to my friends about how the only other country I had seen was Canada to pick up car parts and that I would never find a time to leave the continent. They told me to just wait and opportunity would come knocking, which seemed like bogus at the time. Again, the words of wisdom were right. As a senior who is studying Earth and Planetary Science (EPS), these opportunities for me have not meant summers doing finance in New York or internships at labs, but instead pursuing my passion for geology in the field. Earth science has taken me on research cruises in the Arctic Circle and the Virgin Islands, to Arizona to study soil, to Spain searching for fossils, and most recently the Australian outback field assisting graduate students in sedimentology and collecting samples for my senior thesis.

Field work is my passion. I love it, even when it means remote areas or going without a shower for a month and working from sunup to sundown. I think for me, it is truly where I thrive and I have never learned more and experienced a more powerful feeling of genuine curiosity and care for my research than when I was in the field. This summer was an amazing experience. I lived in a tent for two months in the Pilbara, Western Australia. Most of the time it would be me and one other graduate student backpacking through their field sites, collecting samples, mapping, cooking, and planning. I even got to hold a baby kangaroo!

So, here’s a day in the life!  

6am Wake Up

It was winter in Australia, so the sun would not be coming up yet. It would be dark, maybe 60 degrees, and I never set my own alarm. Honestly, only one of us needed to set one. We were in tents; they aren’t super soundproof! I would pull on the same pair of dirt packed cargo pants I wore everyday, and then maybe change my sun shirt. Most of the time I wouldn’t. I wore a buff on my head everyday over my braids. I would pull on the same socks as the day before, and for breakfast I would wear my camp shoes which were bandana patterned crocs (without holes, so the sharp outback plants didn’t prick me).  

6:30am Breakfast

One of us would start the water for breakfast whilst the other got the food out of the car. We camped near the car and hiked out from there, so it really served as storage. Breakfast was oatmeal with nutella, cocoa nibs, peanut butter, hot tea, and a shared apple with peanut butter. Typically we would chat about our plan for the day and look at our route on the field iPad as we ate before preparing our lunches for the day.  

Lunch was a wrap with avocado (for the first few days) and I always put leftovers from the night before in it. With that, we would eat chili lime soy crisps (classic Aussie snack– super unfortunate we don’t have them in the states) and an orange or two. I also liked to bring another apple to share.  

7am  

Now it was time for work to begin. It was time to pack up our packs and put on our snake garters, which are just panels we would strap around our legs like shin guards in soccer. Our packs would include sample bags, at least 4 liters of water for each of us, a sledge and rock hammer, some chisels, field notebooks, sharpies, a first aid kit, and a meter stick.  

Then we would set off to whatever location we were studying for the day, which ranged from staying on the same outcrop until sunset to some days moving the entire time. We would sample hand samples (fist sized samples) and detrital zircon samples (about five to ten times the amount of material as a hand sample). The pack would normally be over thirty pounds by noon, and climb throughout the day.  

1pm  

Lunch time! Best views of the day. Typically the temperature would be near 90F, and the sun was intense. Sunscreen would be reapplied, water and electrolytes would be replenished, and we would have a pleasant lunch overlooking the outcrop. Sometimes, if we were on the top of a mountain, we would have enough reception to google whatever burning questions we had from conversations throughout the day. Most of the time it wouldn’t load, though, which only further teased us. I can’t remember half of those questions now, and if I ever found out the answers.  

Work would then resume as normal after lunch. This could include drone work, taking notes on stratigraphy and making stratigraphic columns (records of how grain size and sedimentary features have changed over a certain length of the outcrop).  

4pm  

Now it was time to start heading back to camp, typically an hour or two away from the field site. By this time, our water would be low and our packs would be significantly heavier than earlier in the day. We were normally completely drenched in sweat and packed with dirt, cracking jokes on the journey home and debating what we should make for dinner.  

Getting back to camp typically included washing our hands, taking off our snake garters and changing back into camp shoes, and packing away all of the samples we had collected throughout the day.  

6pm  

Dinner time. Our dinner menu was really good- we had pesto pasta with some carrots on rotation with quinoa, lentils, and dehydrated vegetable protein. Sometimes, we would make chilli if we picked up beans and canned vegetables during our resupplies. We would start dinner in the dark as we chose a movie to watch or journal for the rest of the night. Typically we would have to light a mosquito coil since the bugs started to come out.  

8pm  

Bed time. I normally tried to be asleep by 8:30pm, a foreign concept to me now during the school year. But field work is exhausting, and field sleep is a peaceful thing. The outback really doesn’t have large predators to worry about like bears. We would occasionally hear dingoes in the distance, or see kangaroos, camels, bungeras, spiders bigger than our hands, and deadly snakes, but I always felt safe. Before going to bed, we would look up at the stars as the Milky Way lit up the sky and chat a bit more. In the southern hemisphere, you can see the entire Milky Way, and on those clear outback nights it was stunning every single time. Since there was no chance of rain, I never put up my rain fly and so I could see the stars though the mesh of the roof of my tent. Then, I would sleep peacefully until the morning.  

Before conducting research and working with graduate students in the field, I thought I wanted to go into the workforce right after college. My dream job was always researching in fascinating, beautifully geologically interesting places. Now, however, I know that my dream job all along is graduate school and pursuing field research.