Getting Started...

Almost a week back, I started the next two years of my academic life (it is getting boring now!) in IIT Bombay. It took a crazy amount of hard work and mind numbing hours with books I would rather not start naming here. But I made it. I was looking forward to making new friends, getting to know people from different places and backgrounds. Know their story. Try to figure out if I had anything in common with the twenty nine other faces in that classroom. But I did not realize that it would be this hard.

I know it is too early to draw out conclusions and call this a doomed cause. But maybe something could be done to make this transition easier. Something that will make budding geologists recognize the talents of their peers spread all across the country. Why, just the other day, I came to know that there are approximately 500 departments dealing specifically in Earth Sciences. (Whoa!)

Now that is a number that is both amazing and surprising in equal amounts. Amazing because I never knew these many institutions catering to this field even existed in India. And surprising that I hadn't heard about them before. Where are the students of these places? More than that, how are they? Are they brilliant geologists? Expert field or lab researchers? Do they have the same interest as all the students I have encountered till now? Or are they different? If so, how? So many questions...

I am beginning to understand some of the answers to these questions as I sit and look around in my current class in IIT. I see people with the same exact doubts that go through my mind. People making the same sad geology jokes that are starting to get old. (I don't think that's gneiss, we must do something about this schist) I see the same excitement when talk of field work crops up. Maybe we are not so diverse after all. Of course, we all have our own unique capabilites, unique quirks and point of views. But the basic fabric (ah! a geology term finally!) that makes us geologists remains the same.

So, here I am. I think what we, the students of geology, need is a platform. A place to share our experience. Let others know about ourselves. Let out our thoughts and peek into the mind of like-minded individuals. Learn, teach, understand, grow...

P.S.

It will be a momentous task I know. It is not going to easy to get going. But I am sure that with your support, this will seem as easy learning the names in Indian Stratigraphy of the three types of rocks.