¡Geología!

I had my first geology class today, which made me very, very happy. It was Intro. Geo. for students in the geologic engineering department, and there were only 8 people in the class. I got a bit lost looking for the classroom because the geology department is huge: 4 floors in two separate wings in the science building, but I did successfully find it. We were waiting outside for the professor, but he snuck into the classroom through the secret professor entrance, and he was waiting in the classroom for us. The professor looked like the stereotypical mad-scientist, with frizzy white hair and lab coat, and there were rocks on a table in the room (hooray rocks!).

Despite being in a different language, the class felt very much like being at home. The topic the first day was the history of geology, so there was talk about Usher and Hutton and Lylle. Additionally, the explanation the professor gave for uniformitarianism was, word-for-word, the exact definition that I have in my notes from intro geo (the present is the key to the past, or, in Spanish, el presente es la clave del pasado), which also made me very happy.

And the professor complained a little bit about have geology divided-up into sub-disciplines, which he called boxes. He also talked about how rocks should be understood in context, not in boxes, which made me feel like I could have been sitting on the 2nd floor of the YC.

Hooray for uniformity within geology!