Luminescence Dating and Microfossils

The end of this term is fast approaching. I can't quite believe there are only two weeks left already. I've completed two more modules since my last post so figured I'd tell you about about them! I have to say, they were possibly my favourite modules so far (although tephra was also a brilliant module).

The first was Luminescence Dating. This course wasn't originally running at the beginning of the year, which I was highly disappointed about because it was a module I really want to do. I'd heard about the concept of luminescence dating at undergraduate but never really learnt about it. So when the member of staff for another module was no longer able to teach their module, our course leader gave us the option to vote for which module we'd rather have run: luminescence dating or human evolution. I'm so glad the majority of people voted luminescence because I found the module really stimulating. We were taught by an external lecturer and I found her a really good teacher. She was also clearly enthusiastic about the topic which made it even easier to enjoy the module. We started by learning about the concepts and physics behind luminescence dating, which, whilst heavy at times, wasn't too difficult to get my head around. It certainly helped that if we were stuck then our lecturer was more than willing to take a step back and to explain it in a different way. We also learnt about the laboratories for luminescence dating; it was exciting going in to the dark room for the first time through a tardis-like contraption! Later in the week we measured and calculated our own luminescence age through a lot of mathematical equations. I struggled with this at first, but there was plenty of help at hand and once I'd got my head around it, I felt a huge sense of achievement when I reached the final age and felt really elated. Finally, we were tasked with writing up all the processes we went through to obtain the age and to interpret the value based on its reliability for the first part of the assignment. The second part involved a review essay on one of three topics. This coursework was handed in the Friday just gone, and means I am now over halfway through the coursework for this term!

The next module I took was Microfossils. Having used testate amoebae for my undergraduate dissertation, and really enjoying it, I was really excited for this module because I knew they would be covered. We also covered diatoms and foraminifera, which were also fascinating microfossils to study, and very pretty under the microscope! In the middle of the week, we learnt how to pick forams from sediment under a low power microscope, which I actually found to be a strangely therapeutic activity. I certainly wouldn't mind if I were to spend lab time doing it. Having said that, I still enjoyed testates the most, and had a really fun last day on the course when we got to study them. I found it much easier than I anticipated to get back in to the swing of the identifications again. I took some really nice photographs of them under the microscope, which involved an iPhone and a very steady hand!

Our coursework for this module involves a dataset of assemblage data on all three microfossils, which we are required to draw up in to an assemblage diagram and to interpret the past environment from. This will be the next deadline in two weeks time at the end of term. 

My next module is Glaciers in the Climate System. Glaciers have been something I've always been interested in right from when I first learnt about them during my A Levels, and I enjoyed and did well in a glaciers undergraduate module I did, so am hoping for good things. The lecturer is extremely passionate about glaciers so I am sure she and the module will not disappoint.

Tephrochronology and Micromorphology

I can't believe how busy this term is! It's certainly the busiest I've ever been at university before. But I'm having such a good time learning all sorts of new things with much more to come. This term is the term of optional courses, and so far I've finished two: Tephrochronology and Micromorphology.

Tephrochronology has to be one of the modules I was most excited for, even before starting the course. And it has only served to fuel my interest in it. I undertook tephra analysis for my undergraduate dissertation, but at a very basic level. During this module I refined those skills and learnt so much more, and I have to say I want to do and learn more! It's definitely a strong contender for my dissertation. We had three weeks after the end of the module to complete the coursework, which was submitted last Friday. I had a really good time doing it, actually, and seeing how much I had improved from the work I did at undergraduate was really satisfying; even without getting any mark back yet I can tell I improved. So now we have four weeks to wait until we find out our marks. Until then, more modules are underway.

Last week was Micromorphology. I had never even heard of micromorphology before this module was offered, but it sounded really interesting with lots of potential for practical work, which I love. I enjoyed learning about something completely new, and thoroughly enjoyed the practical work, even if it was frustrating trying to get my eye in at times! But it was a really rewarding week. Visiting Queen Mary University was one of the highlights of the week, being able to visit a specialist centre for micromorphology and seeing the facilities available. Now we have three weeks to complete the coursework, which involves a review essay and a description of a thin-section from an environment of our choice. I'm excited to get started in to the first real independent lab work of the masters. 

The other thing that has happened has been the submission of my first PhD application. It was definitely a challenge writing an application for this level of study, but I was happy with what I submitted considering its my first, regardless of the outcome, although it would obviously be amazing to get an interview. Currently I am still awaiting news - fingers crossed! 

There has been a distinct lack of posts on this blogs to what I planned when I started it, and although I knew I'd be busy, I didn't quite expect I wouldn't get around to doing this very often. So apologies, but I hope you enjoy reading about what I do post! 

Next post to come after the next few modules have been taken.

2015!

Happy new year everyone! Apologies for the lack of posts towards the end of last year, coursework and Christmas took over a little.

We all successfully managed to submit our second piece of coursework before breaking up for the holidays, and we also received our marks for the first piece of coursework we handed in. Considering that it was the first piece of coursework I've written at masters level I was really happy with the mark I got. The feedback was incredibly useful (a huge plus about this course/department if you were ever planning to come to Royal Holloway to do geography). Frustratingly for me it all seemed to have been little things I needed to do to break over the grade boundary. Whilst frustrating though, at least I can take it all on board and try to apply it to the next piece of work to, hopefully, improve my grade. 

For us on the MSc course 2015 is the year of optional modules, the Scotland field trip and finally the dissertation. I cannot wait to start the optional courses! I'll get to further what I know about topics I have already studied, but also learn some completely new things that sound super interesting to me! The topics I have chosen are:

Tephrochronology

Micromorphology

Optically Stimulated Luminescence dating

Microfossils

Glaciers in the climate system

I am a big fan of how this term is set up. Out of 10 weeks we are required to chose 5 modules. Each module runs for one week. Following this week, we are given three weeks to complete the coursework associated with that module. So, whilst we will be busy doing coursework during our weeks off, this also gives us a little break from being in lectures all day every day. Luckily for me, the modules I wanted to do were spaced apart very nicely across the term in order to give me good amounts of time between each module to work on coursework. 

During Easter, we are all off on the Scotland field trip. I've heard great things about this trip and it will be really exciting to do some quaternary field work! On the down side, I'm sure it's gong to be very cold all the way up in the Scottish highlands. The things we do for science!

During the summer term we work on our dissertations. I don't yet know the details of the dissertation process, other than dates for certain deadlines such as the proposal, the submissiom and the oral presentations of results. I've not even thought about what I might want to do for my dissertation; in my mind, that's the idea of this term - to start to specialise in a few areas before specialising furthering for our dissertations depending on what we enjoy. 

So that's a brief description of what's going to be happening this year for MSc Quaternary Science students. Will try to post updates as the term progresses!

Semester One Update

The last month has been totally non-stop and it's gone so quickly! It feels like we only had our first week of teaching a couple of weeks ago when in fact there are only three weeks left until we break for Christmas. It's scary how fast the time is going; I got told it would fly by when I applied for the course but little did I know just how true that would turn out to be. 

Loads of things have happened in the space since my last post. The first big milestone, I feel, is the submission of the first piece of coursework! That means that Sedimentology and Stratigraphy is well and truly finished (unless you count the fact we haven't received the results yet). I actually found it really interesting learn a brand new skill (at least for me) during this course - creating sediment and stratigraphy logs. We used Abobe Illustrator in order to do this; whilst at first the software looks like another language, it was actually very easy to pick up following a practical session with one of the technicians. I found myself having a lot of fun with the different methods of displaying data, and ending up with a swanky (if I do say so myself) set of sediment logs at the end made it very satisfying. Let's hope that the write up that goes with them is of a high enough calibre to earn myself a nice first mark of the course.

Another memorable event in the last month was the London Quaternary Lectures held at RHUL. We (the masters cohort) hosted a wine reception following the lectures for the speakers and guests. It was a great opportunity to meet new people within the scientific community. The most valuable conversations for me (at this point in time) were those discussing the course with previous students. It was particularly useful because we have been in the process of choosing our optional modules for semester 2. The majority of us seemed to be debating with ourselves over which modules to take. I'm not sure if I just speak for myself or not but speaking to some previous students really helped me to make my mind up on what I have now decided to study next semester.

Which leads me nicely on to the last thing I want to talk about in this post - choosing our optional modules. We were able to choose 5 out of 10 available modules to study over the course of next term. I spent a good while reading up on the syllabus' for every module I was debating whether to take. There were three modules I was dead set on taking: Tephrochronology, Luminescence Dating and Microfossils. The last two I struggled to decide on for a while. But in the end I decided on Micromorphology and Glaciers. They all sound like really good fun and I think I've chosen a nice broad range of topics whilst at the same time really feeding my interests.

So there's for my whistle-stop update of the last month. In all, I'm so glad I chose to apply for and do this course; I'm having a really good time despite the workload, and I've loved learning all kinds of new things, which I'm sure will continue throughout the year!

Two modules down

This first month has gone by in a flash; two modules down already! This course really is full steam ahead but it's been brilliant. I've learnt so much more than I thought I would have done in such a short space of time and I've felt really engaged in the subject of Quaternary Science.

It would take me an age to describe everything I've been up to over the last few weeks, so I'll just focus on a few stand-out moments.

The first of these is a lecture the majority of our cohort attended at UCL given by Bill Ruddiman, who has formulated the 'overdue glaciation hypothesis' and the 'Early Anthropocene hypothesis'. This was a real opportunity to begin to engage with the current scene of the Quaternary science community, and thus we all jumped at the chance to attend, especially considering we had been talking a lot about these hypotheses in our lectures. Bill was a brilliant speaker - clear and concise, and obviously passionate about his work. He definitely provided some food for thought and sparked a few opinions in the room, evident from the questions asked at the end of the talk, and it was intriguing and somewhat amusing to see how the community engages in debates about current topics.

Secondly, we went on two trips over the last two weeks for the second of the compulsory modules - Sedimentology and Stratigraphy. 

The first was a field day to Hunt's Bay, South Wales for sedimentology. The day was by no means the best day of the year in terms of weather (we all got very wet!) but nonetheless we all had a good day looking at the cliff sequence and conducting analyses on different aspects of the sediments at different sections along the exposure - turns out it was more than just a bit of rock, who would've thought! So now it is our job to create sediment logs of these sequences showing analyses such as lithology and clast orientation, and to correlate each section together in terms of the sedimentologies. I'm excited to see what the final product will look like!

Hunt's Bay, looking out from the cliff.

Hard at work.

During the second week of the module, we had a two-day trip to East Anglia for the stratigraphy component of the course. Across the two days we visited seven sites, from quarries to beach exposures, in order to interpret the nature of the sediments and to take notes allowing us to go away and correlate every site together based on the nature and ages of the sediments. This is slightly different to the sedimentology trip as here we are inferring what time period each section at each site correlates to and using this information for our write-up, whereas for sedimentology we purely focus on the depositional environments of the sediments and carried out more in-depth investigations in order to interpret this.

Needless to say, the last two weeks have been incredibly tiring, but they have been an invaluable experience in our journey through this course. 

And so it begins...

This week has been the first of the MSc Quaternary Science course. It has been really enjoyable and interesting, but I sure am tired! It's been really good getting to know the other students on the course and the staff who are teaching us. 

The other students on the course are all lovely, and I think we each have something to contribute, both as student and as friends. As well as seeing everyone during lectures, most of us went to the pub after lectures one day to celebrate one of my housemate's birthday. It's really nice to wind down after a long day of concentrating and working hard, and start to really get to know one another. 

The staff are all brilliant. They are all so enthusiastic about their work and about teaching a new set of masters students. Not only that, but they seem really friendly and willing to engage in 'normal' conversation, i.e. not about Quaternary Science. They all seem really interested to learn about our opinions and to take part in discussions with us, and even just this week that enthusiasm has resulted in myself taking part in discussions I never would have done before now, and not being afraid to voice my opinion on subjects that, thus far, I don't have any specialist knowledge on. 

Now I'm going to throw in a few scientific words. This week is the first half of the module 'Palaeoclimatology'. At first I had no idea what this would involve. But I have found it a brilliant starting point for the course as it is bringing everyone up to the same point where people have come from different universities and some may have been taught more than others. Especially for the way I work I have found it useful, as I like to start from the beginning rather than having someone assume I know something, even if I do. I find the ideas and knowledge become more embedded in my mind that way, and my understanding of the subject increases. 

I have particularly enjoyed learning about the "overdue glaciation hypothesis" and the "Anthropocene hypothesis". They are both concepts I have not come across until now, but have actually stimulated my mind in to really thinking about the for and against arguments for these theories. My housemates, a few others on the course and myself have planned to go to a lecture at UCL later this month, where the speaker is William Ruddiman, who has provided the argument for the "early Anthropocene hypothesis" and the "overdue glaciation hypothesis". I think this will be an invaluable experience and will be one of the things that, for me, really shows the difference between undertaking an undergraduate degree and a postgraduate degree. 

So that's all I have for now. The course is going really well so far and I'm excited for what's to come!

First day and a bit in Egham!

Yesterday I moved in to my new house in Englefield Green, Egham. As per every girl student, I brought more stuff than I need. However, my room now looks really homely. After unpacking the car and dumping all my stuff on my bedroom floor, I made a start on the grueling task of unpacking. I had absolutely no idea where to start; thank goodness for mum's help! After getting through most of the big suitcases and bags, we decided to head in to Egham for a bite to eat at Costa, after which we came back, I said goodbye to my mum and continued to unpack. At this point I'd got to the stage where I could start to make my room look really pretty and homely. I'm really happy with the result and it's easily the nicest room (and house) I've ever lived in whilst at uni.

I also met my housemates for the first time after only ever speaking via email. It was really exciting but I was also pretty nervous! There was no need to be, however, as they are all really lovely and I think we'll all mix well together and (hopefully!) get along pretty well.

Here are some photos of my new room, followed by photos of the RHUL campus:

My bed with fairy lights hanging above it; I've never hung fairy lights up before and I like how it looks, especially in the evening when it gets darker.

One corner of the room. I hung up my homemade bunting in the top corner which I think adds a really nice touch to the space. I also love the top of the chest of draws with all the bits and bobs I've put there.

Dressing area and desk. I love having a little corner space entirely for all my cosmetics and jewelry etc. And I really like how the wall space in front of the desk has turned out. I love hanging up little keepsakes, I really think it makes a house a home (pardon the cliche!). 

Another view of the corner from the first picture.

Today, my new housemates and I wondered on to the campus of Royal Holloway. We went to complete the ID check before having a mooch around. Above is the courtyard of the big Hogwarts-y looking building, Founder's Building. The photo doesn't do it justice at all; grand, tall and elegant.

The Queen Victoria statue in the center of the Founder's Building courtyard.

Panorama of the entire courtyard. 

We also had a peak inside the chapel. This was seriously impressive. I almost felt as if I were in another country looking at a momentous chapel covered in elegant artwork and filled with the beautiful sound of the organ playing. My housemate Rachael, who has been at RHUL since her first year of undergrad, said they held her graduation ceremony here; I really hope we have ours here too! That would be such a special day in a beautiful setting.

That pretty much concludes my time here so far; I'm sure there is a lot more to come this week during induction. An update will come at the end of the week!