Reflections of the Albany Field Trip

I just came back from a 5 day field trip in Albany. This trip was part of the unit I was taking and I really enjoyed the experience. It was hard and the workload from this is intense. Day after day, we travel around to different places to look at the different rock outcrops. These outcrops do have a story to tell about the history of the place. For example, the Stirling Ranges has the rock age of 2,000 million years old. But the geology and the lithology of the place does not suggest that there were biological lifeforms. More information is needed to support that hypothesis. We could only spend 1 morning at the place due to time constrain and a tight programme.

I remember one of the church members (who is a retired geochemist) told me that as you study geology, you must be prepared to work alone most of the time. Only then, I do know what does that mean. You go around, looking at outcrops and record your observations. These observations are true as they become the data that would support your future hypotheses of the area. If you have people working with you and they jump into interpretations. By hearing their conversations leads to a distortation in your understanding of the lithology of the place.

Part of the error lies within me as I did felt inadequately prepared for the trip. My understanding of geology is limited and I do have limitations in my observations as well. The only thing I could do is to perhaps train on my observations to record as much detail as I can. (Details such as grain size, grain orientation, minerals present (due to cleavage or twinnings), clast or matrix supported rock, differentiate between mafic and felsic streams, bearings of joints/lines of weaknesses and so on..) It is quite a handful to have record as much data as possible but I wish I could have taken some samples back for further examination.

I do notice a sharp contrast with a PhD student and a first year undergraduate student. The PhD student works alot faster than us as they have the experience. Even if we carry the same gear as them, they are able to use the instruments more competantly than us. I too realise that even we think we are professionals in this area, there will be others who are better than us. From that lesson, I understand the mentality of having a teachable spirit and a humble heart. I just hope that I did not give that impression that I had a closed up mind. My lecturer said that if we have a fixated mind to a particular hypothesis, we are not studying science at all.

So much to do but we do need to start somewhere. Novice first, professionals later.