Hello everybody! My name is Jenna Faith and I’m currently entering the 4th year of my PhD program at the University of Texas at El Paso. I study geophysics, specifically seismology, or as most probably know it, earthquakes. I received my undergraduate degree in geology from Juniata College in Huntingdon, Pennsylvania, then went straight into my PhD from there. I think my path to STEM is very linear, but most people question why I chose geology/geophysics as a career. When I tell people I study geology, I always get the response, “So you look at rocks?”, which is correct, but also wrong on so many levels. I fell in love with geology because it is such an interdisciplinary field that can actually make you a lot of money if you get the right job, and I hope my story helps you see just how interdisciplinary a geoscientist has to be to be successful. I also hope my story gives you motivation and hope to keep going and push through the bad times because things get easier and better!
When & Where I Decided to Study Geology
My story to how I became a geoscientist begins in high school. I always loved school and loved my sciences classes. I excelled in my sciences classes. The ones we had to take were biology, chemistry, and physics. I ended up taking extra science classes including advanced chemistry, organic chemistry, microbiology, and advanced biology. I would definitely say I thrived most in chemistry. My friends always said I should have pursued chemistry, but I knew deep down it wasn’t what I wanted to do. I know I didn’t want to be in a lab doing very precise work every day, physics seemed too hard, and I knew the medical field wasn’t for me.
I have always been a travel bug and loved being outside and was always fascinated by nature. I thought back to our 8th grade “earth & space” science class and realized that studying the earth was an option. I googled it more and realized that I would really like pursing this. It’s a field where I get to be outside, I get to travel and see awesome places, and I didn’t really have to interact with the public daily. I could have gone into many other similar disciplines: environmental science, plant/animal biology, wildlife conservation, etc., but I chose geology.
I knew geology was the perfect major for me the moment I traveled to Colorado for the first time and saw the Rocky Mountains. I knew right then and there that I wanted to know how beautiful landscapes formed. For me, it’s the only way to appreciate a landscape’s beauty. To this day, I still love traveling to National Parks and knowing how the rocks in that park got there and formed.
One of the main reasons I love geology is because it is very inter-disciplinary. Every science is used in geology. Depending on what you focus on, you may also need to be educated on biology, chemistry, physics, mathematics, hydrology, history, anthropology, space, microbiology, computer science, engineering. If you can think of a science discipline, a geologist somewhere has it involved in their research. It amazes me how much information from other disciplines geologists need to know.
Undergraduate
After high school, I attended Juniata College in Huntingdon, Pennsylvania for 4 years and received my Bachelor of Science in geology. I absolutely loved my school and my classes. Outside of our core geology classes, we had to take two chemistry courses and calculus I. I came in with college credit already, so I had room in my schedule to take extra classes, so I ended up taking calculus II, linear algebra, and two semesters of physics. Depending on where you go to school, your required math, chemistry, and physics classes will be different.
As I went through my classes in undergrad, I loved all of the analytical parts of my classes. I loved when we had to use numbers, math, equations, or logic instead of just observations or learning facts. I definitely loved lecture over the lab because I was actually learning about the chemistry of minerals and how the different chemistries of minerals form to make rocks. I was such a geek about it (and still am)!
I realized I wanted to go to graduate school but didn’t really fall in love with any particular class I took. I loved my mineralogy class the most (a class where we learned about how minerals form, their different structures, what about their chemistry makes them have certain properties, etc.), but a career in that would also mean a lot of microscope work, which I didn’t want.
This led me to geophysics, which is defined as “the study of the physics of the earth”. I looked more into this and realized that this geology sub-discipline was the one for me. During my senior year, I took an introductory geophysics class and absolutely loved every bit of it. I knew this was the field I really wanted to be in. This is also the area where earthquakes are studied, and I have always been fascinated with them (and study them now).
So, I applied to graduate school for geophysics. My undergraduate professors were the main people who helped me get where I am. I am the only person in my family who has gone to college and no one else in my life knew was it was like to study anything, let alone a STEM subject. It was so hard waiting for those acceptance/rejection e-mails. I never did undergraduate research and never had any internships, so I was nervous that I wouldn’t get in anywhere. But thankfully I got an acceptance e-mail from the University of Texas at El Paso (UTEP) and Montana Tech. I decided to go with UTEP because the teaching assistant salary was better, the weather is better down here, and I liked the advisor/project more.
Graduate School
Geophysics was not everything I imagined. I didn’t realize how much coding/computer stuff I would have to do. I expected organizing data in excel sheets, but nothing like what I actually do every day. I have now learned to write algorithms to loop through hundreds of files, search/extract specific words/phrases in these files, perform certain tasks on seismograms, and literally just analyze everything on the computer. I initially chose geology because I didn’t want to be in a lab, but now I just spend 85% of my time in front of a computer (chuckles).
I also came into UTEP without enough of a math background. Most of our problems are inverse problems. An inverse problem is where you have a set of observations and a model, and you invert these two matrices/vectors (how you have to put them into a computer) to output the actual cause of your observations. There is also a lot of math that goes into analyzing seismograms like differentiating the wave equation, convolutions, cross-correlations, etc. It can definitely be a lot to catch up on and can be overwhelming.
I have spent too many hours crying over codes that didn’t work, math problems I couldn’t solve, and always thinking I wasn’t smart or good enough to be getting this degree. It honestly put me in a pretty dark place for a while, but I knew deep down I would get it, but it would take time. Learning to code is probably one of the few things that didn’t come naturally to me. I’ve always been naturally smart and caught onto things quickly. I was never the person who had to spend hours studying because I usually just understood things on the first go, but not with coding. Looking back, it’s the first thing that has truly ever challenged me academically. Undergrad wasn’t too hard for me and even my geophysics classes aren’t that difficult once I started learning, but coding is something I only got good at once I applied it every single day to real-life problems I was working on.
Thankfully I am at a place where I now understand all of this and worked really hard to learn how to code and understand the mathematics behind everything. As I write this, I’m now realizing how far I have come and how much I have actually learned over the past 3 years getting my PhD. I’m honestly very proud of myself.
How Geophysics Projects Work
I want to explain how geophysics projects work and why knowing the geology of what you’re measuring is still very important. We still collect data, but we don’t (usually) collect earth specimens or take observational notes. We have equipment that measures physical properties of the earth. These properties include gravity (density of the rock), magnetics, electrical techniques, seismic energy (waves), well logging, and electromagnetics.
Believe it or not, rocks have a lot of different properties that we can measure (above). It’s important to have somewhat of an idea of what kind of rocks you are looking at in the subsurface so that you can make sense of your data measurements. For example, if you’re collecting gravity data over a sandstone, you will expect your gravity values to be within a certain range compared to a denser rock like granite. Having some sort of prior knowledge is important because it can also tell you if your equipment isn’t working.
I still use my geology knowledge from my BS every day. When you do geophysics projects, you’re trying to figure out what’s beneath you and you need to know basic geology to be able to put the picture together. You need to make sure that what you measured can geologically occur and it correlates with past research.
Once we have the field work done, we input the raw data into the computer and start processing it. The processing stage looks different depending on the data and what method you are using. Sometimes the processing involves filtering until you get a certain image, or it involves putting tons of files into a certain format so that you can input those files into a computer program. Either way, we eventually get something that we can interpret and make conclusions from.
In Conclusion
Even though I have had some hard times/doubts in graduate school, I still absolutely love what I study. I think it’s so amazing to be in such an inter-disciplinary field. I have always loved learning and I love being educated in so many areas. I’m very proud of how far I’ve come and I’m excited to graduate within the next year or so and start my career in geophysics/seismology.
There are various careers I can get into once I’m done. The national laboratories use seismology to utilize national security measures such as finding new ways to detect and locate explosions (bombs/weapons/etc.), along with lots of other projects. Government agencies can hire people to conduct research on a state’s seismicity. Human-induced seismicity is huge right now (and what I study) due to oil companies fracking and other procedures that occur. There are private companies all over the world who could use my skillset, and you can always become a professor. As of right now, I would like a career at a national laboratory. I feel I really want the team aspect and I love knowing my work is impacting the general public in some way.
My journey has definitely been very emotional, amazing, difficult, life-changing, and everything in between at times, but I’m very fortunate to be where I am, and I’m very excited to continue my journey on becoming a geoscientist.
If you’d like to know more about me, you can follow me on Instagram @phd_geojenna or follow my blog https://geojenna.com
