Getting my head around grad school

Well, dear blog, I have made another transition and need to process it. I tried to do this with my "women in science" post about resources I have found, but I think I need to spend some time just writing about where I am.

Physically, I am sitting at my desk (one of four) in my new office. No one else is here yet-- there is one PhD student who's been in this room for a couple of years, but the other three of us are new, and I'm the only one who's already here, since I worked here over the summer. I have two plants on the windowsill next to me, one is an aloe I adopted from my lab at IIHR/Iowa Flood Center, after a colleague and I discovered it had been abandoned and then repotted and revived it. The other is a little succulent I bought in Cedarburg, Wisconsin last weekend where I saw a group of old friends.
My very own filing cabinet is in front of my desk, and on it facing me are maps/diagrams of the Landform Regions of Iowa, the Stratigraphic Column of Iowa, and a Bedrock Geologic Map of Iowa. These came from a stand upstairs-- we share our building with the Iowa Geological Survey. My very own bookcase is behind my left shoulder. Right now it only has six books in it-- two books about Iowa by Cornelia Mutel, Wetlands, Wetland Ecosystems, Soils: Genesis and Geomorphology, and my adviser's copy of Benchmark Papers in Hydrology: Riparian Zone Hydrology and Biogeochemistry. It will fill up soon.

Mine is one of four offices in "The Maze" in the basement of Trowbridge hall. We have a kitchenette and table in the space the office doors open off of. There's a coffee pot and an electric kettle on the counter, and a dozen or so copies each of the "Journal of Paleontology" and the "Journal of Vertebrate Paleontology" on top of the cabinets.

I am reading papers about nutrient cycles on agricultural watersheds-- mostly nitrogen fertilizer, where it comes from and where it goes. I have done a lot of reading this summer and have a really good start on building my intellectual understanding of all the pieces involved in this. I have also done a lot of insecurity this summer. I keep having golden moments of seeing a part of all the interconnected systems that affect a watershed and its hydrologic and nutrient cycles, and then coming back the next day, or the next hour, or after blinking, apparently, and feeling lost. I know that most of this is a mental thing that I do, where I don't think I'm good enough or smart enough or whatever-enough and freak myself out and undermine some key part of my mind. Clearly I also am just not able or expected to understand everything, but I am finding that just being here in the office and letting myself look through things that I've read and notes that I've taken, I have made a lot of progress towards a thesis topic/question. I will post more about that--hopefully soon-- once I've processed just a bit more. Related to this, though, I have been trying to say the words "I am a scientist" out loud as often as possible, to convince myself.

Classes start next week at the University of Iowa, and I am super excited. I am taking a Wetlands class that I waited YEARS for as an undergrad, only to have its normal offering canceled during my last year here--there is only one professor emeritus who teaches it, so it is not offered very often, and having it offered my first semester of grad school feels like a smile from the Universe. I'm also taking Soils and Hydrology, both of which come as highly recommended courses from highly recommended professors, so it's just going to be a good semester all around.

NASA's Earth Observatory "Notes from the Field" post

I had a post about the field campaign that NASA joined the Iowa Flood Center for in May and June this year, and here is a link:

Not Your Backyard Rain Gauge

Gratitude and Roots

I have been back in the Midwest now for 6 months, and goodness, they have gone fast. I have so much to be grateful for in these months that I don't really know where to start.

I am working for IIHR again, and now mostly for the Iowa Flood Center as a research assistant. The opportunities for learning-- about Iowa, hydrology, technology, research, how science and policy happen separately and how they interact, and all the various institutions that interact to impact and manage the environment-- just at the weekly staff meetings are incredible.

I am close to family and old friends again, which is just beautiful.

I am READING. I am especially trying to learn about Iowa's environment, past and present, but have learned that I read my Goal Books faster if I also let myself read widely and for fun. Being motivated by lists to a kind of ridiculous extent, I've found Goodreads really helpful to keep track of what I have read and what I want to read (50 books last year! 10 already in 2013!). I also made a list there of Iowa nature and history books that anyone can vote on or add to, and I'd love to hear if you have any recommendations!

Iowa looks very different now that I haven't lived here my whole life. Details of landscape and wildlife and food and smalltalk seem less obvious and more precious. I feel like there are Big Things I have learned living abroad that I can express better here than anywhere else, and that I have almost found my voice for expressing them.

I've had a hard time writing this first-post-in-a-long-time. I feel like I need to have bigger ideas better writing to share, but I am just going to post this for now and let it serve as my blog throat-clearing so I can get into the habit of writing here again.