The fall semester blew by so fast that part of me isn’t convinced it ever really happened. Seriously – where did the last three and a half months go? Despite time moving at nearly breakneck speed, I’m happy to say that I got a lot of work done and even hit a few big milestones. Some of the highlights of my semester are below:

Passed Comprehensive Exams! Hello, candidacy!

A major highlight of the semester was passing my comprehensive exams (aka comps) and being admitted to candidacy. For my readers also in academia, you know how big of a moment this is. For my readers not in academia, comps are basically a big test halfway through your PhD to make sure you’re on track. If you convince your committee that you are smart and have a good, feasible plan forward to complete your degree – you pass! If not, you are either allowed to retake the exam or leave the program with a masters degree. What are the perks of being a PhD candidate instead of a PhD student? Well, I get to sign my emails “PhD candidate” now….

In all seriousness, being a candidate is recognition that my committee and I are in agreement that I am on track to complete my degree – and am expected to do so in the next couple of years. This signals to the rest of the world that I’ve completed a master’s degree worth of classes, have a solid research plan, and will be on the job market relatively soon.

Gave my first technical talk at a conference

I attended the annual meeting for the Geological Society of America (GSA) in October, and gave my first technical conference talk. I had presented posters before, but putting together a 12-minute talk on my research to present to an audience with a wide variety of backgrounds was something new and challenging. My usual strategy for presentations is to make very clear, easy to read notes that show up in presenter view with key points bolded – as long as I hit all the bold points I can move on to the next slide. I took this approach again, and as usual practiced the talk until I felt comfortable enough with the material that it felt more like a conversation than a script. I’m glad I didn’t skip the practicing step… imagine my face when I got up on stage to start my talk at GSA and saw that the powerpoint doesn’t show up in presenter mode – i.e. no notes! After that micro-heart-attack-moment, I continued on with my talk and honestly I think it was my best delivery to date. I’m looking forward to giving more conference talks next fall!

Targeted TA Training for Accessibility and Inclusion

As part of a geoscience education research project, Megan R.M. Brown (also a PhD candidate at CU Boulder) and I created and ran a training during the August “new TA orientation.” The purpose of the training was to provide guidance and resources for new TAs on issues regarding accessibility and inclusion in the classroom. The training consisted of a mini-lecture on some accessibility basics, then an hour or so of time for small groups to work through scenarios. For example, one of the scenarios described a situation where you are trying to teach a lab that involves taking measurements down in Boulder Creek. In the scenario, one of the students is making a lot of comments about being impaled by floating sticks, bitten by fish, etc and seems generally nervous. Some of the things groups thought about and discussed were: Why is the student so nervous? Can they swim? Are they afraid of water? Is it difficult for them to go in water because of an accessibility issue? How can you make sure the student still participates in the lab and learns while being sensitive to their apprehensions and ability level?

It was exciting to see how engaged all the new TAs were with the material, and I’m currently collecting data with Megan to determine how effective the training was. Did the TAs remember what they learned? Did the undergraduates notice a change in TA behavior or attitudes? Stay tuned to find out!

Wrote a choose-your-own-adventure short story for a final project….in a graduate level seminar on data assimilation

This accomplishment was certainly a fun one. After finishing comps, I still had a couple final projects to wrap up for my classes. One class, a grad seminar on the theory and application of data assimilation in terrestrial hydrology, had an open ended final project. We had to propose something earlier in the semester that we wanted to do, and I said “something along the lines of figuring out when and why you want to use data assimilation.” As I was working on the project before comps, I was doing a lot of literature review, making a lot of flow charts and bubble maps, and it was all useful but sort of dry. We had to present the project to the class and when I sat down after my comps was over to think about that presentation, the last thing I wanted was to stand up and give a boring, overly technical presentation about a flow chart. I was feeling happy, and creative, and maybe a little emboldened by passing comps – so instead of putting together a typical powerpoint presentation on my lit review, I turned my flowchart into a medieval fantasy choose-your-own-adventure story about Sir Dayta Simmilatio and his journey to conquer the wicked snow beast Swee.  My classmates and the professor (my advisor) seemed to really enjoy reading through it aloud in class. It got such a good reaction, that I decided to polish it, get it illustrated (by my super talented brother, Shepard Fairfax), and will be posting it on my website soon.

Click here for more information and a download link for The Tale of Sir Dayta Simmilatio!