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single person to walk the moon who was not an airforce pilot. It was geologist Harrison Schmitt with Apollo 17 in 1972 who walked the moon and did what every geologist would have loved to do. He threw his rock hammer on the moon.


Julie Driebergen, SA-7559


Why I Want to be a Geologist: A Love Story


I saw him from across the room. I remember the excitement of our first dates in natural history museums and petrified forests. I thought about my shrine to him on my shelf, glittering to vibrant to cryptic nuggets of a world long before I was even born. He’s much older than I am but I don’t care; I longed to find out what’s beyond


his exterior. I stepped towards him, anticipation for the deci- sion I was about to make. I outstretched my arms, about to embrace what would be my everything, my forever. I held him in my arms, my future. Then I handed the bookstore cashier my credit card and bought him, my first geology textbook.


I actually came to SIU seeking a degree in zoology with a geology minor, but when I took my first geology class (Earth Through Time), I fell in love. I don’t know how it didn’t occur to me how perfect of a match we were, geology and me. I spent alternative weekends between the Field Museum of Natural History in Chicago and the Brookfield Zoo. I would spend most of my time dragging my parents through the dinosaur exhibit, knowing how to pronounce the names of dinosaurs and other fossils that other non-nerdy little kids wouldn’t be able to attempt (there’s a special place in my heart for parasaurolophous and pachycephalosaurus). I can’t help but wonder if that recrystallized apatite longed for my presence on weekends that I was at the zoo or that they would become such a huge part of me.


My parents saw the first Jurassic Park while I was in the womb, engraining the roar of a T-rex into my soul before I even saw the remains of what may have produced that sound. My parents say they had never seen such a well-behaved child when they would take me to museum exhibits (wanting every souvenir in the gift shops was another story). I became obsessed with dinosaurs after seeing the fossils and watching the Land Before Time. I watched Jurassic Park when I was quite young; my parents asked me how I felt about the lawyer meeting his end, making sure they hadn’t ruined their child’s psyche by showing a PG-13 movie to a four year old. I appar- ently ust shrugged and said that the dinosaur had to eat. I collect(ed) rocks and dinosaur figurines everywhere I went (and currently go). I was always a science kid, watching Bill Nye and the Discovery Channel. I also went through a volcano stage as a little kid; I was probably too young to have seen Dante’s Peak at the time but it was truly mesmerizing how the earth produced such powerful forces of nature. At some point my focus switched to extant animals. Geology becoming the one that got away. My dad always thought I would be an excellent paleontologist, but supported my dream of shoveling animal feces as a zookeeper. When I told him I was going to double maor with geology, his reaction wasn’t a surprised one


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but rather an “it’s about time” one. Don’t get me wrong, I still adore animals, hence my double maor.


In fact, my fascination with ancient creatures and my future life career of being a paleontologist is homage to the ances- tors of the animals to which I would have been in servitude. Learning and figuring out from what an animal descended is fascinating, and the ones we awe over today wouldn’t be awe-able had mutations had not occurred and they had not evolved. Evolution is fascinating. How geological processes preserved the carcasses of animals is fascinating. The fact that a super volcano exists in my country that could send the earth into a very cold climate and devastate a good chunk of the continent is fascinating. Based on my interests, it makes sense that geology is mon amour. But our love story didn’t start until I was 19.


I knew paleontology was a possibility, there’s no doubt I would have taken an opportunity to work with fossils in high school, but animals were my main endeavor. I thought the geol- ogy minor would satisfy my craving for rocks. I was wrong. It came naturally to me. It left me wanting more. It was the class I looked forward to the most. After a single class, I declared my double maor. Geology won my heart; reunited for good. I wanted to know more about Earth’s processes. I wanted to know what made up every rock I saw. Now I consider myself more of a geologist than a zoologist. I wear my flannel and rock hammer proudly. I decorated my eep in Jurassic Park décor (despite all of the incorrectness of the movies, there’s nothing like seeing what you love come to life on the big screen and on your car). There’s no doubt I’m a geologist. There’s no doubt I’ll be one always.


However, I have an ulterior motive. I like to dress nice to class; I can look like a “girly-girl” at times. I’ve been told in my male dominated classes that I don’t look like a geologist (like I would wear a dress while scaling a rock face to look at the varying grain sizes and depositional environments?). I want those boys to answer to me, as their boss, and my future PhD in geology. Women are a minority (although the population is growing, I’m lucky if there’s even five of us in one of my classes). I’m going to break the stereotype, and use my love to make way for the future of the field. I want to be a geologist for all the girls in the past who were told they couldn’t be one. One day I want an even split of female and male geologists.


I’m not plotting to try to skew the gender ratio curve, though. I’ve always wanted to do something with my life that made me happy. I was going to be happy interacting with animals for up to 20,000 a year. My dream ob has never been about the money. Sure geologists make more, but what I want to gain is more knowledge and contribute more knowledge about prehistoric life to the masses. I want to discover a creature no one has seen before. I want to nickname it “Julie” or maybe even after my cat, and have people gaze at it in wonder, never thinking about the person who discovered it but loving what I found. I want to casually listen in on the conversations people have about it, and smile knowing that I unearthed something that caused a connection between people sharing information. Maybe a little girl or boy will look at it and feel inspired to become a paleontologist herself or himself. Maybe Jurassic World 5 will consult me on the accuracy of its dinosaurs. Maybe I can convince them to ust call it Mesozoic World since that would be more accurate. Maybe my fossil won’t be famous and I’ll spend my days content, dirty, and sweaty in a tent in a field helping an actually famous geologist discover something and having a giant pile of rocks to take home for my shrine (as


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