New Accretionary Wedge: Inspiration

I will be hosting the next Accretionary Wedge carnival right here at the Magmalicious Blog! I’m very excited.

A rather inspiring field trip, though not the one that sucked me in.

I once had a conversation with our provost about how almost no one goes to college planning to study geology. (The exceptions always seem to be children or other close relations of geoscientists.) For the rest of us, a general lack of exposure before college seems to keep it off most of our radars as a career option, and then somehow, sooner or later, we fall into a great class or a fun research project or an exciting field trip, and we get sucked in. That means taking up geology is very often a switch from another planned career track. I think that’s a pretty interesting aspect of geoscience — the stories that got us here are so varied, and people come to it with such passion.

So July’s topic is about your inspiration to enter geoscience. Was it a fantastic mentor? Watching your geologist parents growing up? A great teacher, or an exciting intro field trip? How did it happen? Deadline of July 10, and leave your permalink in comments when your post is up!