Welcome back,
I'm aware I've been a bit MIA for the past 2 months but uni term was back in full swing and writing up my mapping project took up the majority of my free time. But now, December is here and with it brings the vac and the looming deadline to submit my project. Having forced my mum to sit down and watch a 46 slide powerpoint of all the figures I have made for my project write up last night, I think it's time to chat about the efforts I've put in (and there have been A LOT) since returning from the field in order to make my final map and write up the project. So here we go....
Making the Map
A screenshot of QGIS on my desktop with a sneaky peek of my map (zoomed out because I don't want people I know to see my map up close and judge it lol)
After the first week of uni was over and done with, courses for that term were decided on, and the initial rush of organising freshers into cheer try-outs was over, I turned my focus back to my map. This meant a tute where Catherine and I admitted to out tutor how baffled we were by the map, a subsequent mental breakdown when we were informed maybe we should have a bit of a rethink about some of our interpretations, and many hours spent staring at my maps on my bedroom floor and in various libraries, before finally I whipped out the colouring pencils and finalised the boundaries. Now, feeling very proud of myself, I turned to the mammoth task of learning how to use QGIS. QGIS (which I think stands for Quantum Geographic Information System) is basically a desktop geographic information system that allows you to do many cool things but notably, in my case, make a map that sits in the right place on a map. Many hours were spent with some very helpful YouTube videos made by one of our lecturers learning how to use the software before the final map was made. It involved georeferencing all our data points (basically tying them with coordinates to the right place on a map), adding in all the outlines of rocks, adding in all the structural measurements, and adding in features such as faults and folds. Once this was all done I conveniently realised I had indeed used the wrong coordinates for half of my map (maybe I should have noticed this a bit earlier given I spent 6 weeks mapping the place oops) and had to redo that half. Nice.
Digitising the map was by far the hardest, and in my opinion most boring, part of the project write up. But in the end the results were satisfying and I am proud of myself for learning an entirely new skill.
Thin Section Prep
Action shot of me looking very cool cutting some rocks
Before thinking about the actual writing part of the project there was still some more rock fun to be had. This involved me, Catherine, and a very patient PhD student supervisor venturing down the basement labs to cut our rock samples for thin sectioning.
Thin sections are 30 micrometre slithers of rock that get prepared into a slide to then look at under the microscope. We had collected samples from key locations in the field to make these from, in total getting 12 thin sections created between the pair of us. The rock cutting itself was very fun actually. We used diamond saws which, to our bewilderment, doesn't cut your skin (we were not allowed to test this theory so really who knows...). According to google, the way this works is that the 'teeth' are so tiny and flesh is so soft that individual diamond crystals are deflected away from your skin and the hard edge just slides over it. But recommended some google searching of your own if you want to know more.
Once cut, we sent our samples off to the Open University where they were made into thin sections and return to us for some funs hours of microscope work that we will get onto later...
Starting the Write Up
So no more practical things to do as procrastination I boldly made a word document and started out by making a contents page. In all honesty this was very helpful in setting out what I actually had to do for the write up section and once that was sorted I began writing up.
What I have forgot to mention here is that summer holidays Liv was actually very organised and I had a good chunk of my research done, organised into sections, and colour coded by source before term even started which was a fantastic move from me because it meant that at this point I had the facts and could begin to word vomit out a draft.
I started with the introduction, easy things about logistics, location, and general area background before moving onto the structure section. Having previously spent many hours with my map this stuff was pretty well ingrained into my head and writing it out wasn't too hard. In order to analyse the folds in my area I chose to make stereonets using a very straight forward app called Stereonet 11 which I highly reccomend. Having our data already in a spreadsheet (we did this while in Ireland) meant that I could just import it into the app, press a few buttons and boom, stereonet was created. This made me very happy. The structure section explored the folds, faults, unconformities, and epithermal vein in my area. Fun fact this vein apparently (according to a GSI survey in 2019) is gold bearing. Shame we didn't see any of that in the field.
After structure I turned to my lithology section. As the thin sections hadn't yet arrived back from Milton Keynes I could only talk about what we saw at field scale, but this was a great start. Reading a decent chunk of literature and having a lot of chat with Catherine meant that I had a good idea of what I was going to say here. Whilst in the field we were able to correlate our units to units in the literature as well as write out full scale unit lithological descriptions in our field books that were so helpful when it came to the write up. This section, on advice form my tutor, was a bit dull. Basically just stating what you saw, aka "the unit was a grey cross bedded sandstone with fine to medium size grains", and " the unit was a pink cross bedded sandstone with fine to medium size grains", and not to forget, 'the unit was a green cross bedded sandstone with fine to medium sized grains". A thrilling read I know but that's what gets you the marks (hopefully), remember: if you want to make any interpretations you have to have the observations down first to back them up! (My tutor Claire, 2023)
Microscope Time
Two pics taken down the microscope of various sandstones from my project and a picture of one of our slides (centre)
Now I had a lovely word document with about 2000 words of Irish rocks down it was time to turn back to some practical work when the thin sections arrived. At this point it was week 7 (of 8) in term, everyone was exhausted, stressed and cold (November in the UK :() so what more did we want to do than spend hours staring down microscopes!
It was actually quite a nice process, reminiscing about the hours we spent looking down microscopes before our second year practical exams we did a lot of swapping slides, helping each other identify minerals and locating 4th years to give us an idea of what was going on. Some things were identified that Catherine and I were not expecting, some things we did not agree on, and luckily many things we were hoping to find. The skill of using your phone camera to take pics down a microscope once again got whipped out and after maybe a week and a half the analysis was done.
Finishing the Write Up
Having now seen my rocks very close up I had a better idea of their composition and put this into the lithology section with more thrilling insights such as "the composition was 50% quartz of 1-2mm sub-rounded grains, some with sutured contacts", or a classic of, "it was very pink in hand specimen and this was confirmed under the microscope'.
But don't let the boring stuff fool you, the worst bit was still to come. Writing up the geological history.
This bit I left until the vac started so was alone and confused in empty libraries around Oxford. Luckily once again past Liv had pulled through by also organising her notes for the geological history section before term started so I began again with the word vomit to just get something down. Unfortunately I came across two problems. 1) I did not have a clue what oceans formed when in Earth's history and messed with up numerous times causing some drastic rewrites to be needed and 2) no matter how hard I tried I could not find extra content to get the section from my rather stubborn 1294 words up to the 1500 word minimum. This gave me little hope as surely I should be able to reach the word minimum and basically I just gave up and moved on. (Don't worry I came back later and we are now at a respectable 1518.
Figures
The figures I think were the most fun part of the project. This involved the making and digitising of cross sections, stratigraphic columns and general figures from literature and field photos. I did this all on google slides. Yes, I digitised my cross sections and strat column using the shape tool on google slides. This may seem a little silly (most people use Abode Illustrator or Inkscape) but I was not about to teach myself how to use yet another piece of software so I channeled my inner year 7 ICT skills and did it all on google slides. Side notes powerpoint online does not let you free draw shapes hence the use of google slides instead.
I am actually very proud of all my figures and think they look great in the report (not to toot my own horn or anything). I spent a lot of time adding scale bars to thin section photos, adapting figures from literature and writing figure captions but I did secretly enjoy most of it. It was a very satisfying process. I have now managed to crash my word document twice trying to load the figures into it but that seems like an issue for not right now (may regret this later...)
The Not So Fun Stuff
Then, as with any academic piece, it was time for the boring bits. I had to write out all my references. Am I organised and use a reference manager like my boyfriend keeps telling me is the best thing ever? No. So I hand did my reference list. Is this a waste of time? Yes. Don't do it. Tbh, not sure why I did but that one happened. I did however in text cite things as I went along so it was just a matter of writing out the reference list at the end that was dull but didn't take an awful amount of time.
Then with that done, my contents page formatted, header and footer added and page breaks in place (because word online is funky when it comes to that) the project was really starting to take shape and it was time for a cheeky proof read.
Poster
The final step in the process before submission (which happens in Jan) was making the poster. Yes we have to maker a poster, but it's not a cutesy poster you make in year 9 english it's a serious, academic vibe poster that shows my map, cross sections, strat column and key figures in a lovely visually pleasing way meant to wow my professors.
This meant learning to use inkscape and I was not happy about it. Now back home, I set myself up in my local costa coffee for the day and banged out the poster. Once I had figured out the basics of inkscape, which involved a whole lot of googling, the process was not that bad. I personally think its a very pretty poster and did proceed to go home and individually show each of my family members because I am an Oxford girly who thrives on academic validation and praise, oh dear.
Now, on the 23rd December I have hit my personal deadline of getting my mapping project finished before Christmas. Just need to print out and submit everything when I'm back in Oxford in the new year. It has been a long process but it's been very cool to see it all come together and no matter what I score (I won't know until the end of the academic year) I am pleased with the work I have to submit. Now it is time to turn my attention to our 3rd year extended essay...
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