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How To Be a Geoscience Student · PlanetGeo: The Geology Podcast

0:02
SPEAKER_01: Welcome to Planet Geo, the podcast where we talk about our amazing planet, how it works, and why it matters to you.
0:12
SPEAKER_01: Are we live?
0:13
SPEAKER_01: The red light is on.
0:14
SPEAKER_01: Ooh, I'm so nervous.
0:16
SPEAKER_01: Are you nervous?
0:17
SPEAKER_01: I uh no, I'm not nervous.
0:20
SPEAKER_01: I'm not nervous when I talk to just you.
0:21
SPEAKER_01: I'm nervous occasionally when we interview people, especially we've gotten a lot better, but it is nerve-wracking to be on with somebody you don't know and really be asking good questions and and you know, really trying to make the most and out of their time they dedicate to us.
0:34
SPEAKER_01: But you know, with you.
0:35
SPEAKER_02: That's interesting.
0:36
SPEAKER_02: Okay.
0:37
SPEAKER_02: Well, I I would I would hope you weren't nervous with me, but that is interesting.
0:40
SPEAKER_02: I I don't feel the nerves anymore.
0:42
SPEAKER_01: I think it's more maybe more just uh, you know, it's a it's a combination of excitement and you want to be on point, you want to ask good questions, you know, it's like you be prepared, more prepared.
0:51
SPEAKER_01: Whereas I can sit down with you and riff about geology and stuff like that.
0:55
SPEAKER_01: So yeah.
0:56
SPEAKER_02: We don't usually riff, but today is today we're gonna rip.
0:59
SPEAKER_01: Today's gonna be a riff one.
1:00
SPEAKER_01: Okay.
1:00
SPEAKER_01: Okay, Chris, two questions for you.
1:02
SPEAKER_01: First off, we got an email from Joyce, and my question is what the heck do you do when you go over there on Fridays with the three of you?
1:13
SPEAKER_01: Because the email from Joyce is word of the day, under thunk.
1:17
SPEAKER_01: And she says, basically, Chris, dad and I always sit on the patio.
1:21
SPEAKER_01: Yesterday we came up with underthunk.
1:23
SPEAKER_01: Please work it into the podcast.
1:25
SPEAKER_00: So this this brings up to me, what are the three bull highs doing on the patio?
1:31
SPEAKER_02: Like you misinterpreted.
1:33
SPEAKER_02: I am not there.
1:34
SPEAKER_02: I was not there when we came up with this.
1:36
SPEAKER_02: This was my mom and my dad sitting on the patio.
1:39
SPEAKER_01: Coming up with words to work into the podcast.
1:41
SPEAKER_02: I guess.
1:42
SPEAKER_02: I I'll tell you, I pulled up.
1:44
SPEAKER_02: This kind of scared me a little bit.
1:45
SPEAKER_02: I told my dad too.
1:46
SPEAKER_02: I pulled up last week and it was a beautiful, beautiful fall day, sunny out.
1:51
SPEAKER_02: My dad's sitting on the patio and he is out cold.
1:54
SPEAKER_02: He is sleeping.
1:55
SPEAKER_02: And I pull up and I open the door, no movement, and I'm like, oh my gosh.
2:01
SPEAKER_02: Is my dad down?
2:02
SPEAKER_02: He's like, Okay, I seriously yeah, he did not move until I brought my dog Maple, my new little puppy, and she went up and jumped right up on his knees, you know, and that woke him up.
2:14
SPEAKER_02: And I'm like, ooh, good.
2:15
SPEAKER_02: He's alive.
2:16
SPEAKER_02: Good deal.
2:16
SPEAKER_02: Yes.
2:17
SPEAKER_02: Daddy can't.
2:19
SPEAKER_01: You just can't sleep that deeply anymore.
2:21
SPEAKER_02: I mean, no, you can't do that.
2:23
SPEAKER_01: No kidding.
2:24
SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
2:24
SPEAKER_02: No, I was not a part of the conversation where they came up with underthink.
2:27
SPEAKER_01: So underthunk, we'll try and work in underthunk.
2:29
SPEAKER_01: Um I'm not sure it's a necessary word, but we'll try, Joyce.
2:32
SPEAKER_01: We'll try.
2:33
SPEAKER_01: We'll go for it.
2:34
SPEAKER_02: Understand the context of underthunk, but I'm sure she'll fill me in.
2:38
SPEAKER_02: I think it's the opposite of overthunk, but you know, I'm not.
2:42
SPEAKER_01: Maybe.
2:43
SPEAKER_01: I don't know.
2:43
SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
2:44
SPEAKER_01: We'll try we'll try and work it in here.
2:46
SPEAKER_02: No, well, so Jesse, hey, today's episode it stems from hold on.
2:53
SPEAKER_01: I get we gotta have a deep sigh before we dive into this.
2:58
SPEAKER_01: Uh let it out kind of a thing.
3:00
SPEAKER_02: So all right, warning to everyone.
3:02
SPEAKER_02: This is gonna be a little bit of a like a philosophical, I think, talk about the state of education, maybe today.
3:11
SPEAKER_02: And it stems from a phone call.
3:13
SPEAKER_02: I check in with Jesse, my dear little friend.
3:16
SPEAKER_02: I try to check in once a day and I just make sure I'm alive.
3:20
SPEAKER_01: Yeah, I mean, we talk.
3:22
SPEAKER_01: I think it takes me, Chris, about till this point in the semester, like halfway through semester, to figure out when your prep hour is.
3:28
SPEAKER_01: I know.
3:28
SPEAKER_01: Did you call me regular intervals?
3:30
SPEAKER_01: I my guess is it's somewhere between like 9 15 to 1015 this semester.
3:33
SPEAKER_01: Is that kind of ballpark?
3:35
SPEAKER_01: It's ballpark.
3:36
SPEAKER_02: That's right.
3:36
SPEAKER_02: It's it changes a little bit every day.
3:38
SPEAKER_02: But so I call you, and you always come on and you're like, yo, what's going on?
3:45
SPEAKER_02: That's what I always get.
3:46
SPEAKER_02: And I didn't get that from you.
3:48
SPEAKER_02: I had I had flustered Jesse on the line.
3:52
SPEAKER_02: So why don't you pick up from there?
3:54
SPEAKER_02: You were I had cranky Jesse, so why don't you tell you?
3:58
SPEAKER_01: Well, I mean, without going too much into detail, I had I was I give this in this intro level class, I give uh quizzes.
4:05
SPEAKER_01: There are three quizzes in the middle of uh throughout the semester, and they're online and you know.
4:09
SPEAKER_01: Anyway, students have a long time to take them.
4:12
SPEAKER_01: It's online, so they can take it at any point during the day.
4:14
SPEAKER_01: And and this is the same class I teach as well, okay?
4:18
SPEAKER_01: The one that you talk about.
4:19
SPEAKER_01: Okay, go ahead.
4:19
SPEAKER_01: Yep.
4:20
SPEAKER_01: And so I had given one of the quizzes, the first of the three.
4:23
SPEAKER_01: And usually students have the the hardest time on the first one because we're just getting spun up on geology concepts, and we we haven't really started to build on top of it yet.
4:30
SPEAKER_01: So there's always frustration and angst.
4:33
SPEAKER_01: This semester, though, I'd gotten some emails that were asking for extensions on the quiz for a variety of reasons, many of which were not super valid.
4:42
SPEAKER_01: Uh like I had forgotten, they'd forgotten.
4:44
SPEAKER_02: You're doing a horrible job setting this up because this is not really how it went.
4:48
SPEAKER_02: You were really upset because you said that on these quizzes, I first of all, I dropped the lowest of the three.
4:56
SPEAKER_02: I drop it at the end of the semester, and you said I gave them all day.
5:00
SPEAKER_02: I had a window from 9 a.m.
5:02
SPEAKER_02: to six p.m.
5:03
SPEAKER_01: And then you were class that day, so we don't have our hour and a half class.
5:07
SPEAKER_01: So they can I tell them take it during that time period.
5:10
SPEAKER_02: You had gotten some emails asking for extensions or there were problems with the assignment, all right.
5:16
SPEAKER_02: It wasn't gonna fit within the nine to six window of getting this done.
5:20
SPEAKER_02: Yeah, yeah, yeah.
5:21
SPEAKER_01: Yeah, exactly.
5:22
SPEAKER_01: Exactly.
5:23
SPEAKER_01: And and noting that I know they have an hour and a half, the quiz takes 50 minutes, five, zero minutes at most.
5:29
SPEAKER_01: That's all that's the the most time they have.
5:31
SPEAKER_01: And I know they have an hour and a half free because we don't have class that day.
5:35
SPEAKER_01: So I know that they have from 10:30 to noon free.
5:39
SPEAKER_01: But yes, a bunch of emails later on in the day.
5:42
SPEAKER_01: Uh we extended, I didn't realize, you know, this kind of thing.
5:46
SPEAKER_01: Um, and so I I was a little frustrated because you know, you always feel bad.
5:50
SPEAKER_01: You're like, okay, yeah, I feel bad.
5:51
SPEAKER_01: But also, no, I, you know, you're not gonna get an extension the day of.
5:55
SPEAKER_01: If you give me a week's notice and you're like, hey, you know, it's a it's a holiday in my religion, or I've got a school trip, or I'm involved in this other thing, I can't make it, sure, I'll I'll assign it to you a different day, the day before, day after, etc.
6:06
SPEAKER_01: Like I make accommodations, right?
6:08
SPEAKER_01: Within reason, or you get sick in the morning of, you email me, great, okay, fine, we'll figure that out.
6:13
SPEAKER_01: It's no problem.
6:14
SPEAKER_01: But not planning ahead is something.
6:17
SPEAKER_01: So anyway, I I had a little bit more of a colorful rant to you over the phone than the story we're telling.
6:23
SPEAKER_01: Yeah, right.
6:23
SPEAKER_01: Exactly.
6:24
SPEAKER_02: And then I followed up with asking you if this is something that you're seeing more and more.
6:30
SPEAKER_01: I'm really interested, Chris, to get more to get a clearer window into your insight here as your career arc has progressed.
6:37
SPEAKER_01: To answer your question, I haven't been teaching this long enough.
6:40
SPEAKER_01: This is my like fifth or sixth year teaching this class, and part of that was COVID.
6:45
SPEAKER_01: So I'm not really sure that I have enough of a long view to know if it's increasing this type of uh attitude, I guess.
6:52
SPEAKER_01: Um, and let me let me say this by most of my students in this class are upper level students.
6:58
SPEAKER_01: They're engineers.
6:59
SPEAKER_01: A lot of them, I would say at least 150 out of the 190 students are probably engineers.
7:04
SPEAKER_01: So they're senior, you know, they're juniors or seniors, they've been in college a while, they need this class for accreditation.
7:10
SPEAKER_01: Like, these are this is no joke.
7:12
SPEAKER_01: I'm getting a particularly like good crop of students in this class that are science and math based, you know, are familiar with this stuff.
7:20
SPEAKER_01: So these these are high-functioning students generally.
7:22
SPEAKER_01: So I was surprised by some of this stuff.
7:24
SPEAKER_01: Anyway, you what is your perspective on this?
7:27
SPEAKER_02: Yeah, so I said to you, I said, first of all, I want to frame this also that I feel like I'm getting a little bit of pushback from my alum, Grand Valley, GVSU, and the professors who just had the geology picnic and so on.
7:40
SPEAKER_02: There's chatter about the students today and how they're different.
7:46
SPEAKER_01: From what?
7:46
SPEAKER_01: From my generation?
7:48
SPEAKER_01: Oh, yeah, for sure.
7:48
SPEAKER_02: And let's talk about that because I have some specific examples that I want to touch on with you and Andrew compared to today.
7:55
SPEAKER_01: So, Chris, let me let me hold on.
7:57
SPEAKER_01: Let me just let me just frame this for a listener.
7:58
SPEAKER_01: We're gonna there's probably gonna be a little complaining session here with you and me, Chris.
8:03
SPEAKER_01: And that this is a hard thing to do.
8:04
SPEAKER_01: Like, we don't want to be the cranky complaining about the new generation, right?
8:08
SPEAKER_01: Like, that's not what we want to do here, and that's not the point of this.
8:11
SPEAKER_01: But I think there are systematic changes that are occurring that we should be aware of.
8:15
SPEAKER_01: And we're gonna end with a discussion of how really how to be a geoscience student, Chris.
8:20
SPEAKER_01: What makes a student stand out to you and what stands out to me?
8:23
SPEAKER_01: Like, what do the exceptional students that I get?
8:26
SPEAKER_01: I get many of them.
8:27
SPEAKER_01: What makes them stand out from their peers?
8:29
SPEAKER_01: Like, that's gonna be the end discussion here, and we're gonna focus in on that.
8:32
SPEAKER_01: But first we kind of got to set the stage with some problems we see.
8:36
SPEAKER_01: So, okay, all right, that go.
8:38
SPEAKER_01: You're talking about Grand Valley State University, who you send from Hudsonville, not you personally, but Hudsonville sends what five to eight to ten geoscience, eventual geoscience majors a year, maybe not quite that many, but uh a handful a year at least.
8:52
SPEAKER_01: Yeah, a lot go from Hudson to Grand Valley State University and go into their geology program or their geoscience program.
8:58
SPEAKER_02: Yes, correct.
8:59
SPEAKER_02: So I'm getting this chatter about this, and you know, some of it's online, some of it's face-to-face, and some of it's via email, like what's going on, Chris?
9:07
SPEAKER_02: You know, what's what's happening down there?
9:09
SPEAKER_02: And then then I talk to you, and I can say anything to you.
9:12
SPEAKER_02: You're a good friend of mine, so I can we can talk and have this kind of discussion.
9:16
SPEAKER_02: And I I also want to say to our listeners that, and Jesse, I think you agree 100% on this, but we're really curious too about what you think about what we're gonna say.
9:25
SPEAKER_01: Like, I would exactly if you're a geoscience educator and and you are experiencing some of the things that we're talking about here, or or your different experiences, please email us.
9:34
SPEAKER_01: Planetgeocast at gmail.com.
9:35
SPEAKER_01: We I mean, we we definitely want to hear from people, especially those who are in education on this.
9:40
SPEAKER_02: Or just because I think this spills over into this isn't just geoscience education, this is just like this what's happening is spilling over into a lot of facets of society.
9:51
SPEAKER_02: If this speaks to you, like you noticed this, or or maybe you disagree with us entirely on what we're gonna say, then I really am curious to hear this.
9:58
SPEAKER_02: It'd be really interesting.
10:00
SPEAKER_02: So, all right, we're gonna talk about the trickle down, what I call the trickle down.
10:04
SPEAKER_02: When you started saying this, I immediately talked to you about Grand Valley and the chatter that I'm hearing.
10:10
SPEAKER_01: And yeah, which is so interesting because Chris, I know I experienced this.
10:14
SPEAKER_01: I was not the first crop of students, but I was on the early phase of students that were coming out of high school, having had your geology degree, who went to local area colleges.
10:25
SPEAKER_01: And even by the time I went to Hope, and certainly by the time I graduated, the professors at Hope knew that Hudsonville students had a different level of geology exposure than any other area high schools because, in large part, I mean, there's a few other schools who did similar things.
10:38
SPEAKER_01: Grand Haven was a really good program, but they knew that Hudsonville was one of the standout programs as far as preparing students, specifically in geology, quite well.
10:46
SPEAKER_01: And Grand Valley has always regarded Hudson's program highly.
10:50
SPEAKER_01: So this was a surprise to me to hear that you are No, no, no.
10:53
SPEAKER_02: Hold on.
10:53
SPEAKER_02: I think you no, I think I'm hearing chatter about students in general, about not my students that came out of Hudsonville that went there.
11:01
SPEAKER_01: This is background high school students.
11:04
SPEAKER_01: Absolutely.
11:04
SPEAKER_02: What is happening at the high school level?
11:06
SPEAKER_02: Because my students in Gen Ed, the classes that we teach, there are things that are lacking right now.
11:14
SPEAKER_02: And so let's talk about the discussion that you and I had because I'm like, wait, wait a minute, Jesse.
11:19
SPEAKER_02: I I said I think I can offer some context on this because education now at the high school level, and actually it's all the way through now, certain things are very different than when you went through back in the day, and I don't know how far back to go, but it doesn't matter.
11:37
SPEAKER_02: But you know, things mattered, time mattered, deadlines mattered.
11:41
SPEAKER_02: And today in education, it's not when you learn the content, it's that you learn the content.
11:48
SPEAKER_01: Oh, that's interesting.
11:50
SPEAKER_02: So deadlines don't matter, you know, tests don't matter, homework assignments don't matter because it's all about do they show mastery of the content by the end of the trimester or the semester or the by the end of the class?
12:07
SPEAKER_02: Okay.
12:08
SPEAKER_02: That's what it's all about.
12:10
SPEAKER_02: So you can give a test and then they don't do well on the test, and then they can retake the test or they can do test corrections, things like this, and you have to reteach things.
12:21
SPEAKER_01: Oh, that's so interesting.
12:22
SPEAKER_02: So it's all about that they learn the content by the end of the class.
12:28
SPEAKER_02: And so things like quizzes that you're talking about, and homework assignments, all this stuff, right?
12:33
SPEAKER_02: If they don't do a homework assignment, that doesn't matter.
12:36
SPEAKER_02: It's okay as long as they get it done by the end.
12:40
SPEAKER_02: They show mastery of the content by the end.
12:45
SPEAKER_01: Are you you're suggesting that that they're you know what I'm seeing students asking for extensions for let's say less than high quality reasons.
12:53
SPEAKER_01: You're saying that that's a this is like a one-to-one.
12:55
SPEAKER_01: Like this is what they're being taught is okay in high school, and so therefore I'm seeing it at the college level.
12:59
SPEAKER_01: Is that your what you would yeah?
13:01
SPEAKER_01: Okay.
13:01
SPEAKER_01: That's my Grand Valley faculty were suggesting as well, the sort of noises you're hearing about the average high school.
13:08
SPEAKER_02: Because all of a sudden, then they get to university and deadlines do matter.
13:12
SPEAKER_02: A professor posts something on Blackboard or whatever platform you use or Google Classroom.
13:17
SPEAKER_02: I don't know what you guys use, but you know, you post something on there and they can't find it.
13:21
SPEAKER_02: That's a thing.
13:22
SPEAKER_02: Is that have you found that to be an issue?
13:24
SPEAKER_01: What I've found to be an issue, and we'll come back to this, I'm sure.
13:28
SPEAKER_01: Firing off an email to your professor is the first solution, the first path taken.
13:34
SPEAKER_01: Oh, I don't know, so fire off an email, as opposed to, oh, I don't know, let me look, let me go to the syllabus, let me see if I can find the answer, and then a last resort, email the professor.
13:46
SPEAKER_02: Or just I'm not gonna even email the professor.
13:48
SPEAKER_02: I'm gonna go in after it was due and say, I couldn't find it.
13:52
SPEAKER_01: And say, Oh, really?
13:53
SPEAKER_01: Oh, that's interesting.
13:55
SPEAKER_01: So I've had that in other classes, Chris, not the G CI1 class, I have had that in other classes, which shocked me when students were just like, I've never been taught how to use Excel, so I didn't even try on this exercise that includes use of Excel in it after the fact, and it's sort of like I mean that that astonished me.
14:14
SPEAKER_01: And that sounds like kind of a similar attitude.
14:17
SPEAKER_01: So, okay, I'm picking up that you disagree with this movement in education to kind of it's not when you learn it, but it is where you learn it.
14:24
SPEAKER_01: I'm I'm is that accurate?
14:26
SPEAKER_01: Like you you kind of don't like this trend, this direction that education is going, right?
14:30
SPEAKER_01: So yes or no?
14:32
SPEAKER_01: That's a complicated answer.
14:33
SPEAKER_01: And and so So well, let me ask my question then here, Chris.
14:37
SPEAKER_01: Like, take if you could take the most positive side of this.
14:41
SPEAKER_01: What is the rationale for making this transition?
14:45
SPEAKER_01: What's the pro, what's in the pro list of transitioning education in this direction?
14:50
SPEAKER_02: Teaching is all about content.
14:52
SPEAKER_01: Okay.
14:53
SPEAKER_02: That's it.
14:53
SPEAKER_02: Flat out.
14:54
SPEAKER_02: That's there's nothing else.
14:55
SPEAKER_02: It's all about content.
14:57
SPEAKER_01: Who cares if they get it at week one or if they get it at week 39?
15:01
SPEAKER_01: Who cares?
15:01
SPEAKER_01: Again.
15:02
SPEAKER_01: Yep.
15:02
SPEAKER_01: Interesting.
15:03
SPEAKER_01: So there's part of me, to be honest, that kind of gets that.
15:06
SPEAKER_01: If you're on the job, well, I mean, it does matter when you know it, but you're sending them off when they graduate high school, that's when they're done.
15:13
SPEAKER_01: So, like if they get everything by the time by that time, who cares?
15:17
SPEAKER_01: So that that kind of partially makes sense to me.
15:19
SPEAKER_01: So, what are the downsides?
15:21
SPEAKER_01: What problems do you have with this transition or this movement?
15:24
SPEAKER_02: So now this gets deep f like philosophically in terms of well, but you've been doing this for a long time at a very high level.
15:32
SPEAKER_01: So your opinion matters on this.
15:33
SPEAKER_01: I mean, you've you've seen generations of students and you've seen transitions, like dramatic transitions, societal transitions amongst generations.
15:41
SPEAKER_01: I mean, you you've seen Gen X to millennial to Gen Z's to whatever new students are being called.
15:47
SPEAKER_01: So you've seen it all.
15:48
SPEAKER_02: So yeah.
15:48
SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
15:51
SPEAKER_01: You taught Norman Bowen back in the day.
15:53
SPEAKER_01: So, like, okay, you know.
15:55
SPEAKER_02: Here we go.
15:56
SPEAKER_02: That's a good one.
15:57
SPEAKER_02: Okay.
15:58
SPEAKER_02: Well, I guess I believe that education is more than just content.
16:02
SPEAKER_02: It's you know, education, there's a lot of life that parallels going through a formal education.
16:10
SPEAKER_02: Formal education doesn't mean everyone's on the same track.
16:13
SPEAKER_02: You know, that everyone, you know, has to go to college to live a happy and monetarily pleasing life.
16:19
SPEAKER_02: It's uh that's not what I'm saying at all.
16:21
SPEAKER_02: But I I think that there are so many lessons that are built into this kind of thing.
16:25
SPEAKER_02: I mean, they think about this, they spend so much time in a formal education, K-12.
16:32
SPEAKER_02: And so I think that teaching things like you know, deadlines matter, that doesn't just apply to you, but that applies to when you leave school.
16:41
SPEAKER_02: Deadlines matter.
16:42
SPEAKER_02: I don't wherever you land.
16:44
SPEAKER_02: Whether you're in just a regular nine to five job or a seven to five job, whatever, there's accountability.
16:51
SPEAKER_02: And so like I I see this with my students today is that there's there's no grit and there's no um, how do you put this?
17:01
SPEAKER_02: Like, there's no urgency to anything.
17:04
SPEAKER_02: They don't study anymore for tests.
17:07
SPEAKER_02: They do not study for tests.
17:09
SPEAKER_02: No.
17:09
SPEAKER_02: Why would they?
17:10
SPEAKER_02: I wouldn't have.
17:11
SPEAKER_02: I know what I was like 90 years ago.
17:13
SPEAKER_02: I I I wouldn't I wouldn't study for tests if I knew that I could do retakes or I could do test corrections and you know, I mean that why you don't need to.
17:24
SPEAKER_01: What's the point?
17:25
SPEAKER_02: Yeah, that's right.
17:26
SPEAKER_02: And so I just think I feel like education is a really good tool to teach young people about what life is like.
17:34
SPEAKER_02: It's more than just content.
17:36
SPEAKER_01: This is a question I've asked.
17:38
SPEAKER_01: Well, I was shocked when I heard it was a high school teacher who taught science at both AP and general level who made a comment along the lines of, it's my job to get these kids ready for college, which frankly kind of shocked me.
17:54
SPEAKER_01: You teach a lot of high-level classes where I'm guessing you're teaching geology, people are taking this to get college credit, and they're probably college bound.
18:02
SPEAKER_01: Do you think it's your role as a high school teacher to get kids ready for college or to get them ready for life?
18:08
SPEAKER_02: Get them ready for life.
18:09
SPEAKER_02: This is really interesting too, Jesse.
18:11
SPEAKER_02: But in my astronomy class, I have nothing but seniors in astronomy.
18:15
SPEAKER_02: And uh one of their things is they have to do a presentation on a topic that they choose.
18:18
SPEAKER_02: It's a deep dive, they're in the weeds, it's all content, content, content.
18:23
SPEAKER_01: But when they start off, the weeds, I hope they love the weeds, it's the best place to be.
18:28
SPEAKER_02: So I tell them though, like you have to introduce yourself, and what do you what are your plans for next year?
18:34
SPEAKER_02: And it's really, really interesting that seven years ago, eight years ago, the vast majority of my students were college bound.
18:43
SPEAKER_02: And now I would say of my astronomy students, and they're good students, it's closer to 50%.
18:50
SPEAKER_01: Seriously?
18:51
SPEAKER_01: Wow.
18:52
SPEAKER_01: Okay, what are what are the other 50%?
18:55
SPEAKER_01: What do they say they're gonna do?
18:56
SPEAKER_02: They're going into specialization, they're gonna get specialized degrees, not a liberal arts degree with a with certification.
19:04
SPEAKER_02: Yeah, they're getting certifications, absolutely.
19:05
SPEAKER_01: I mean, this is such an amazing development.
19:08
SPEAKER_01: I'm so happy to hear about this development.
19:10
SPEAKER_01: I mean, it's such a travesty, I think, that my generation in particular was like funneled to everybody was kind of funneled to college and everything else was left.
19:18
SPEAKER_01: I mean, this is why we don't have any high-end welders in America, is because everybody was like funneled to you know, it's such a massive problem in society, I think.
19:26
SPEAKER_01: And this is why we're all burdened with debt, because everybody went to college and inflated the cost of college massively.
19:31
SPEAKER_01: And so I'm so happy to hear this.
19:33
SPEAKER_01: And even if the answer is like, I don't know, but I'm not going to college right away.
19:37
SPEAKER_01: I'm gonna take a year off and go volunteer somewhere, or I'm gonna go into the armed services, or I'm gonna do something else for a year or two, and then go back to college.
19:46
SPEAKER_01: That is such a healthy development.
19:48
SPEAKER_01: I'm so happy to hear that.
19:49
SPEAKER_01: I I mean it sounds stupid coming from a college professor, but like I'm really happy to hear that.
19:54
SPEAKER_02: I think it's so it actually sounds refreshing to hear that from you.
19:58
SPEAKER_02: But back to your example of we don't have enough highly skilled welders, let's say or whatever.
20:04
SPEAKER_02: Making that up, but you know what I mean.
20:06
SPEAKER_02: But I I get your point.
20:07
SPEAKER_02: But what my point is is that when you're doing that kind of a job, deadlines matter and hustle matters, and you know, urgency matters a lot, and a thing like that.
20:17
SPEAKER_02: And and if they've never in a formal school, that's where they spend most of their time, K-12, they've never had that.
20:25
SPEAKER_02: What happens then?
20:27
SPEAKER_01: That was exactly where I was gonna go with this.
20:29
SPEAKER_01: Is that is the pendulum?
20:31
SPEAKER_01: I don't know how to explain this, but I'm thinking education's never ahead of the curve.
20:35
SPEAKER_01: Education's kind of always lagging behind pedagogy and stuff.
20:39
SPEAKER_01: It just takes a while for new ideas and pedagogical developments to kind of catch up with societal movements, I think.
20:45
SPEAKER_01: So I feel like my generation, we were funneled to college.
20:49
SPEAKER_01: Now the education system's kind of like lagging behind that or kind of focusing on that, like, okay, you need to learn the content by the time you get out of our doors.
20:56
SPEAKER_01: Meanwhile, half the students are going out to work to the workforce, and all of a sudden they need all these life skills that are like much more valuable for them to learn.
21:04
SPEAKER_01: If you miss your test, if you don't study one Thursday night and on Friday you vomit, yeah, that sucks, but that's life, you know.
21:12
SPEAKER_02: That's right.
21:12
SPEAKER_02: Or the other side of that, Jesse, is that you know, I was busy Thursday night.
21:17
SPEAKER_02: I know I have a test on Friday night.
21:20
SPEAKER_02: How do I use my time?
21:21
SPEAKER_02: Do I get on the front end of it and use my Wednesday night?
21:24
SPEAKER_02: Or do I just, you know what?
21:26
SPEAKER_02: Sometimes you gotta stay up late.
21:28
SPEAKER_02: You know, you can sleep on Friday, but can I bring in the other side?
21:32
SPEAKER_02: Actually, first of all, I want to talk about you and our beloved friend Andrew, because you both went through at the same time.
21:38
SPEAKER_02: I'd old Andrew graduated in 2005.
21:41
SPEAKER_02: You guys were top notch students, and neither one of you had a 4.0.
21:45
SPEAKER_01: Please please say more.
21:48
SPEAKER_01: Please say more about how top notch we were.
21:49
SPEAKER_02: You guys were you guys were top notch.
21:51
SPEAKER_02: And I went back and looked, right?
21:53
SPEAKER_02: A 3.9 GPA, a 3.9, let's say I think 9.3 or something like that.
21:59
SPEAKER_02: 3.9 In 2005, graduating class, like 400 students.
22:03
SPEAKER_01: We don't chris, Chris, Chris.
22:04
SPEAKER_01: We don't need to use dates here.
22:06
SPEAKER_01: We can skip over the date part.
22:08
SPEAKER_01: Sorry, you're getting old too.
22:09
SPEAKER_02: So a 3.93 GPA would put you at 12th in their class in terms of GPA.
22:16
SPEAKER_01: In my grade class, when I in 2005 graduating class, yeah.
22:20
SPEAKER_02: So now, Jesse, we have over 100 kids graduating every year with a 4.0 or higher.
22:26
SPEAKER_02: Are you kidding me?
22:27
SPEAKER_02: No.
22:28
SPEAKER_01: Holy cow, because AP classes are out of a 5.0 scale.
22:31
SPEAKER_02: It's a five, it is, it is that, but it's also, Jesse, it's a real thing and it's great inflation.
22:37
SPEAKER_01: Okay, so I I'm not sure if I've experienced this, but in the time that I have been teaching, including TA ing in graduate school in Canada, which has the same, I think, educational kind of stigma or or problems and solution sets.
22:50
SPEAKER_01: In the time that I've been teaching college students, I have seen this happen.
22:54
SPEAKER_01: Grade inflation is for real.
22:56
SPEAKER_01: Students expect an A.
22:58
SPEAKER_01: And especially in this G PC 1 class that I teach, this physical geology, students expect a rubric, and if they check all the boxes in the rubric, they get an A.
23:06
SPEAKER_01: And I just fundamentally kind of disagree with this approach and think that it's just not that simple.
23:14
SPEAKER_01: You can't break, you can't break geology, you can't break life down to a formula that X plus Y plus Z equals 100%.
23:21
SPEAKER_01: I get an A.
23:22
SPEAKER_01: You it's just not that simple.
23:23
SPEAKER_01: There has to be room for ambiguity, there has to be room for uncertainty.
23:27
SPEAKER_01: You you know, I get why great inflation happens.
23:30
SPEAKER_02: It's undeniable.
23:32
SPEAKER_02: Um, I have mixed feelings on this.
23:34
SPEAKER_02: So let's talk about that a little bit.
23:37
SPEAKER_02: Here I am, I'm I'm at the tail end of my career, right?
23:39
SPEAKER_01: You're hanging on by a thread, man.
23:41
SPEAKER_01: People, I've heard the people talking, and they're like, that guy's gotta retire.
23:45
SPEAKER_01: When are we gonna get rid of crystallice?
23:48
SPEAKER_01: I'm kidding.
23:49
SPEAKER_01: Obviously kidding.
23:50
SPEAKER_02: But I know you are.
23:51
SPEAKER_02: But grade inflation, my grades are inflated.
23:54
SPEAKER_02: Okay, I'm just gonna say it.
23:56
SPEAKER_02: And you know, because I'm I'm not gonna be the lone wolf out there holding the C as the average, and I'm not gonna do that because I want to survive.
24:06
SPEAKER_02: Well, students won't take your class anymore.
24:08
SPEAKER_01: Well, students won't take your geology.
24:10
SPEAKER_02: If that's not what I mean, though, I just mean I don't want to battle parents every day.
24:15
SPEAKER_02: For so just from a the standpoint of longevity, and and I know that I'm gonna hear about this from my dad.
24:22
SPEAKER_01: You know, these why not take on the take on it?
24:25
SPEAKER_02: Take it on, do it, you know, do your job and and so on.
24:28
SPEAKER_02: But here's the deal about that is when you and Andrew took my class 20 years ago, it was a harder class.
24:35
SPEAKER_02: It was a harder class.
24:37
SPEAKER_01: So uh can I ask a quick question?
24:39
SPEAKER_01: Absolutely.
24:40
SPEAKER_01: Because your students always take Steve Maddox's Grand Valley exam.
24:43
SPEAKER_01: Has the average grade changed in the last 20 years?
24:47
SPEAKER_02: I I'm so so glad you asked the question because that's it, right?
24:51
SPEAKER_02: Is that they haven't.
24:52
SPEAKER_02: The vast majority of my students pass Steve Maddox's exam and are able to earn college credit, and that number hasn't changed.
25:01
SPEAKER_02: If it's changed, it's gone up.
25:02
SPEAKER_01: Really?
25:03
SPEAKER_01: So if we had Steve Maddox sitting in here, which we interviewed Steve a year one of Planet G or something like that, if we had him sitting here, would he say my exam has gotten easier?
25:11
SPEAKER_02: No, not at all.
25:12
SPEAKER_02: No, my kids are still learning the content.
25:15
SPEAKER_02: And you know, that might be uh a couple of factors, right?
25:18
SPEAKER_02: I'm I'm a better teacher now than I was 20 years ago when I had you.
25:21
SPEAKER_02: I know what I'm doing.
25:23
SPEAKER_02: And I can get done what I need to get done, but the kids don't have to work at it.
25:30
SPEAKER_02: I have worked harder.
25:31
SPEAKER_01: I see you you you've made it easier on them.
25:33
SPEAKER_02: I well, I yeah, I have.
25:35
SPEAKER_02: You know, they get to do test corrections and things like this that I never did with you and Andrew.
25:39
SPEAKER_02: Never.
25:39
SPEAKER_02: It was one and done, man.
25:41
SPEAKER_02: Like, hey, if you bombed a test, that's that's our day.
25:44
SPEAKER_00: Uh pill both ways through the snow.
25:46
SPEAKER_00: I mean, you know, it was real roughly in my day.
25:49
SPEAKER_02: Your class was much, it was significantly more difficult than it is now.
25:55
SPEAKER_02: The vast majority of my students earn A's, and I I have struggled with this before in the years past, and I'm like, well, wait a second.
26:02
SPEAKER_02: My students are still nailing a college exam, they're acing it, right?
26:08
SPEAKER_02: And so uh it's okay.
26:10
SPEAKER_02: So I wrestle with that in terms of I'm not gonna be that lone wolf and try to take a stand and and I'm gonna fight great inflation all by myself.
26:19
SPEAKER_01: You know what?
26:19
SPEAKER_01: And and there's uh this interesting exercise that has been done at Penn State where you know we have these faculty, I forget what they're called now.
26:26
SPEAKER_01: They're SR, they used to be called SRTE student S R something, something teacher assessment or whatever.
26:33
SPEAKER_01: Anyway, the students like rank professors at a variety of questions on a scale of one to seven or something like that.
26:40
SPEAKER_01: And you know what?
26:41
SPEAKER_01: Every letter grade that you increase on average your class, you get a one-point jump bump in your SRTE scores.
26:48
SPEAKER_01: Oh but Chris, you know, one interesting thing is there are other countries, the United Kingdom, for instance, they have a much tougher grading policy.
26:56
SPEAKER_01: And actually, interestingly, when we look at letters of recommendation, and maybe this leads us, this is a good segue into like how to be a good student, maybe, but um, when I look at letters of recommendation that people write, so when grad students apply to graduate school, or when we hire new faculty members, we ask for letters of reference from have three people write letters of reference for you.
27:16
SPEAKER_01: We always have to factor in the inflated letter writing that Americans do.
27:22
SPEAKER_01: Americans write flowery positive letters, like glowing, like this is literally the smartest person ever.
27:29
SPEAKER_01: You should hire them.
27:30
SPEAKER_01: If you don't hire them, you're missing out on a future National Academy member or something like that.
27:35
SPEAKER_01: Whereas Europeans are much more cautious.
27:37
SPEAKER_01: This person's very good.
27:39
SPEAKER_01: They did very well in this class, they did this exercise for me, they completed this thesis, this is what they did there, done.
27:44
SPEAKER_01: And part of that's like the American attitude, you know, where we do we tend to be a bit more vivacious, maybe, and that's a good thing in many ways.
27:52
SPEAKER_01: But but it's so interesting that this there's these cultural differences in education that expand into letter writing, references, letters of reference.
28:01
SPEAKER_01: And it's interesting to sit down and be like, okay, I'm getting a letter of reference from a German PhD supervisor versus an American PhD supervisor.
28:09
SPEAKER_01: Like, those are not going to be the same letters just by default culturally.
28:12
SPEAKER_01: And so you kind of have to internally calibrate those to get it.
28:15
SPEAKER_01: I know.
28:15
SPEAKER_01: So I there's all sorts of stuff in this that is worth a much longer discussion.
28:20
SPEAKER_02: But maybe Before we transition, real quick, I you know, I've taken the other side of this with my dad because so here's the thing.
28:28
SPEAKER_02: All of this said, with you know, are we teaching life in school?
28:34
SPEAKER_02: And my kids are have recently gone through.
28:37
SPEAKER_02: My kids are young, and uh they're both rocking it.
28:41
SPEAKER_01: You know, you know my kids, and you're your kid, you're the the bullheise kids.
28:44
SPEAKER_01: Yeah, oh absolutely.
28:45
SPEAKER_01: You raised very high, high functioning, incredibly high-functioning kids.
28:48
SPEAKER_01: Like the uh so the the generation, the Gen, what are they, Gen Z?
28:53
SPEAKER_01: Are your your kids or Gen Z.
28:55
SPEAKER_01: I don't know what they are.
28:56
unknown: I don't know what they are.
28:57
SPEAKER_01: Actually, they're not millennials, that's for sure.
28:59
SPEAKER_01: They're Gen Zers, I think.
29:00
SPEAKER_01: This is an impressive generation, I must say.
29:02
SPEAKER_01: I mean, the students I interact with and and that are interested in my research group, they are just hardworking, impressive.
29:09
SPEAKER_01: My graduate students are top to bottom, impressive individuals, and they have a lot to learn, but they are very impressive, more impressive than I was at their age, I think.
29:19
SPEAKER_01: You think so?
29:19
SPEAKER_01: Um, in many ways, yes.
29:21
SPEAKER_01: In many ways, yes.
29:23
SPEAKER_01: And so there are a lot of positives of these societal shifts.
29:26
SPEAKER_01: There are probably some downsides too, but there's definitely some positives.
29:29
SPEAKER_02: I agree with this too.
29:30
SPEAKER_02: Uh, you know, shoot, just yesterday, Jenny asked me, How are the summer science kids, the kids that I teach in this field cast, a lot of uh in the summer field class, a lot of them take my astronomy class.
29:43
SPEAKER_02: And she said, How are the summer science kids doing in astronomy?
29:46
SPEAKER_02: And so yesterday I just said, Well, other than just generally being awesome, they're doing great, you know, because I love them.
29:54
SPEAKER_02: I mean, they are uh they're amazing people, they are amazing, amazing individuals.
29:58
SPEAKER_02: So it's such a conflict for me in terms of what I see on one end and what I see on the other end.
30:06
SPEAKER_01: I don't know what to make of this, you know, like so uh it begs the question, Chris, and I guess maybe we can transition now into like what what stands out to you?
30:14
SPEAKER_01: What makes a student stand out to you, and what has and has that changed?
30:18
SPEAKER_01: I'd be curious to know, has that changed through time?
30:21
SPEAKER_01: Like in my generation 20 years ago, what made a student stand out?
30:25
SPEAKER_01: And and is that the same series of characteristics or actions that a student today could use to stand out?
30:32
SPEAKER_01: Like how to be a good student, how to be a good geoscience student?
30:35
SPEAKER_01: Because frankly, Chris, a letter of recommendation goes a long way.
30:39
SPEAKER_01: It's unfortunate to say, well, no, it's not unfortunate to say.
30:41
SPEAKER_01: You need to impress the people who you want to be mentors or you want to write good letters of recommendation for you.
30:47
SPEAKER_01: And you don't need to be so strategic to just think about that, but it's worth considering like how do I be a better student?
30:52
SPEAKER_01: How do I be a better learner?
30:54
SPEAKER_01: Yeah, is that the question you're asking?
30:56
SPEAKER_01: What do you what do I think?
30:57
SPEAKER_01: How's it?
30:58
SPEAKER_01: Yeah, what impresses you of the people that stand out in your brain right now that are in your astronomy or geology class, what are the exceptional ones doing that makes them exceptional?
31:06
SPEAKER_02: The way I'm gonna answer that, Jesse, is if I were not in education, let's say I earn I owned a hardware store or something like that, who would I want to hire?
31:16
SPEAKER_02: That's who's impressive to me.
31:17
SPEAKER_02: You know, who's gonna show up?
31:19
SPEAKER_02: Who's gonna work hard when they're not being watched?
31:22
SPEAKER_02: Who's intelligent?
31:23
SPEAKER_02: You have to have your wherewithal and know what you're doing.
31:26
SPEAKER_02: It's grit, it's urgency, it's I'm gonna be on time, I'm gonna be, I'm reliable.
31:31
SPEAKER_02: That's what I look for like in terms of being impressive, is just like, what do you look for in people that you surround yourself with?
31:41
SPEAKER_02: It's the same thing.
31:42
SPEAKER_02: That's why I don't think we can divorce education and life.
31:47
SPEAKER_01: I agree completely with that.
31:49
SPEAKER_01: I think in I see a very different cross-section than you do, which I think is interesting, but it there's many shared similarities.
31:56
SPEAKER_01: Like when I'm well, first of all, students who stand out to me are ones who at the undergraduate level express an interest.
32:03
SPEAKER_01: It's as simple as that.
32:04
SPEAKER_01: It's come up to me after class and be like, a student asked me a question in class, what was it about now?
32:10
SPEAKER_01: I'm forgetting what she asked me.
32:12
SPEAKER_01: She asked me something about to dive in a little bit deeper on like forming ecleget or something like that.
32:17
SPEAKER_01: I answered it and that seemed appropriate, and then she came up and asked me another follow-up question on that topic.
32:23
SPEAKER_01: Like something clearly clicked.
32:24
SPEAKER_01: And you know what?
32:25
SPEAKER_01: She stands out in my mind now, this student.
32:27
SPEAKER_01: And there's a there's a couple students who regularly, not every day, but you know, maybe once every fourth lecture or something, come up and ask me a question, ask me to go a little bit deeper.
32:36
SPEAKER_01: Those students are the ones who stand out to me.
32:38
SPEAKER_01: And you know what?
32:39
SPEAKER_01: If they ask for a letter of recommendation or they want to do research in my lab later on down the road as they progress in their college career, they're gonna still stand out.
32:47
SPEAKER_01: I'm be like, yeah, you are really engaged in G Sci 1.
32:50
SPEAKER_01: You stood out in a room full of 200 students.
32:52
SPEAKER_01: It's actually not that hard to do, really.
32:54
SPEAKER_01: It's be interested.
32:56
SPEAKER_01: I think the same thing when I'm looking for graduate students.
32:58
SPEAKER_01: When graduate students, I get a lot of impressive graduate students, prospective graduate students who email me, who are really, really impressive in undergraduate and on paper.
33:07
SPEAKER_01: The main thing is are you interested?
33:10
SPEAKER_01: Are you engaged at a different level than your peers?
33:14
SPEAKER_01: And it's not that hard to do.
33:16
SPEAKER_01: It's show an interest, it's do your homework, do your research.
33:19
SPEAKER_01: Like, have looked at my website, have read a paper or two of mine, or have read, I have all on my website, I have all my student profiles and their LinkedIn profiles, and their websites are linked in there as well.
33:31
SPEAKER_01: So, like, if someone comes to me and is like, hey, I looked and I saw that your PhD student, Eric Screenover, is working on this really cool project and is doing this thing, and you know, that seems really interesting to me.
33:39
SPEAKER_01: I'm like, whoa, I'm blown away.
33:41
SPEAKER_01: You've done your homework and you clearly have found something that that scratches that itch for you.
33:45
SPEAKER_01: You stand out now because you've just gone that little extra step further than most people do.
33:52
SPEAKER_01: Because I'm not going to give you the answers.
33:53
SPEAKER_01: You have to you have to kind of show me you're interested.
33:56
SPEAKER_01: That's I mean, and that sounds arrogant to say that, but I think that's what is the most important thing.
34:00
SPEAKER_01: You don't have to be the smartest, you don't have to have a 4.0, you don't have to get stuff so quickly, you just have to be interested.
34:06
SPEAKER_02: Yeah, and the other thing, Jesse, because I I've been with you at conferences and I've seen you interact with potential grad students, PhD or whatever.
34:16
SPEAKER_02: That's right.
34:16
SPEAKER_02: You know, and and the other thing that I would add to that, the importance to you.
34:21
SPEAKER_02: So I'm inserting into your mind right now, is below maintenance.
34:26
SPEAKER_02: You know, yeah, that's that's huge for you is that you need to show that you can figure things out.
34:32
SPEAKER_02: Well, you can do things without being asked.
34:34
SPEAKER_01: Like you're gonna figure out that's exactly right.
34:37
SPEAKER_01: And it's not that you can like go solve the problem on your own, but that you're gonna go try.
34:42
SPEAKER_01: You're gonna go try and you're gonna come to me with potential solutions.
34:48
SPEAKER_01: I want you to come to me having tried to find the answer.
34:52
SPEAKER_01: Don't just come to me with a problem.
34:54
SPEAKER_01: Like, I I ran into this and then I stopped.
34:56
SPEAKER_01: I want you to say, I ran into this, I tried this, I tried this, I tried this.
35:00
SPEAKER_01: Which one do you think is best to continue going down?
35:03
SPEAKER_01: That's what you want to see, right?
35:04
SPEAKER_01: Because that's a path to self-learning and independence.
35:08
SPEAKER_02: You are not the first resource, you're way down the line.
35:12
SPEAKER_02: When you talk about being low maintenance, that's what you mean.
35:15
SPEAKER_02: Exactly.
35:16
SPEAKER_02: You've done your work, you've done your due diligence, and and okay, I'm stuck now.
35:22
SPEAKER_01: Dr.
35:22
SPEAKER_01: Rymanck, help me.
35:24
SPEAKER_01: And this is the thing, like I I don't I don't want to sound you know uh an absentee supervisor or something like that.
35:30
SPEAKER_01: Because I I spend a lot of time with students, like supervising a student is teaching, it's just a different form of teaching, and I take that very seriously.
35:38
SPEAKER_01: But that being said, the teaching is it's an apprenticeship.
35:41
SPEAKER_01: You're you're guiding somebody towards independence.
35:44
SPEAKER_01: And you know, at the end of four years, you need to be an independent researcher who can figure stuff out on your own and you you've built up enough.
35:50
SPEAKER_01: So I can't just teach you at all.
35:52
SPEAKER_01: That's not a way towards independence.
35:54
SPEAKER_01: If I was gonna do the project, I could do it a lot quicker.
35:57
SPEAKER_01: I've just got more experience, I could just do it quicker.
35:59
SPEAKER_01: But that's not the point.
36:00
SPEAKER_01: The point is to get somebody to a point where they're independent in a wide variety of skill sets and they can be self-sustaining and can go out on their own in the research world.
36:08
SPEAKER_01: Um, so exactly as you described it, I can't be the first resource.
36:12
SPEAKER_01: I'm certainly a resource.
36:13
SPEAKER_01: I am definitely in the top three resources you have, but I can't be the first one.
36:18
SPEAKER_01: That I think it just requires interest and this sort of self-learning.
36:22
SPEAKER_01: You know, we had this interview with Lauren Hirschap, and uh, it's just she's she phrased it really well like just be a curious learner, a constant learner.
36:31
SPEAKER_01: Learn about the world around you and keep asking questions and keep trying things.
36:35
SPEAKER_02: I think that's the I talk about that because I think I call it going back to your roots because you know, we were born curious.
36:42
SPEAKER_02: You have a one-year-old, wait until Shep turns two and three and tell me how many times he asks why in a three-minute time interval.
36:52
SPEAKER_02: You know, it's it's gonna be they're they're born to want to know.
36:56
SPEAKER_02: To want to know why.
36:57
SPEAKER_01: Yeah, totally.
36:58
SPEAKER_01: Absolutely.
36:58
SPEAKER_01: And keep that curiosity going, you know.
37:00
SPEAKER_01: Okay, I have I want to end on a positive note here.
37:03
SPEAKER_01: Sorry, you were gonna ask something.
37:05
SPEAKER_02: Do you have a No there was something I wanted to we said put a pin in it and let's come back to it later on, and I was gonna do that.
37:11
SPEAKER_02: But go ahead, ask your question.
37:12
SPEAKER_02: What what are you what are you thinking?
37:14
SPEAKER_01: I mean, or I I'm finding as I get older, it's uh occasionally easy to sort of be ah, new generation, cranky, crazy, you know, complain, complain, complain, right?
37:24
SPEAKER_01: But at the same token, I'm constantly blown away by the students, the graduate students, the undergrads, the undergrads who work in my research group are unbelievably impressive.
37:33
SPEAKER_01: I'm always astonished.
37:34
SPEAKER_01: And you know what?
37:35
SPEAKER_01: The students who certainly in higher level classes and even in G SI1, like I'm in here, uh there are a dozen students who stand out to me as like, wow, this is a really good student.
37:44
SPEAKER_01: This is somebody who's already at this point in the semester.
37:48
SPEAKER_01: So I guess my question, Chris, is we have laid out some concerns about trends.
37:55
SPEAKER_01: Do you think it matters?
37:56
SPEAKER_02: How you got to the when I said put a pin in it, let's come back to it.
38:02
SPEAKER_02: That was the question, right?
38:04
SPEAKER_02: And uh that's unbelievable.
38:05
SPEAKER_02: We haven't talked about this, but that's it, right?
38:07
SPEAKER_02: Does this matter?
38:08
SPEAKER_02: That's it.
38:08
SPEAKER_02: Okay, oh, interesting.
38:09
SPEAKER_02: So my daughter graduated last December with a degree in nursing from NMU, Northern Michigan University.
38:16
SPEAKER_02: My parents went to the graduation.
38:18
SPEAKER_02: Jenny's parents went to graduation.
38:20
SPEAKER_02: My dad, being a former educator, during the graduation ceremony, he was very upset by the volume, the number of people that had honors, you know, Magna cum laud, and you know, all these different things, right?
38:37
SPEAKER_01: Yeah, yeah, yeah.
38:38
SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
38:39
SPEAKER_02: And he he wanted to talk about that with me.
38:42
SPEAKER_02: So we got into a discussion.
38:44
SPEAKER_02: We're having a beer and we're, you know, having a discussion about this.
38:48
SPEAKER_01: And I'm like, You got Chris, you got to do your day of impression.
38:53
SPEAKER_02: Chris, there were just too many.
38:56
SPEAKER_02: Too many, great inflation.
38:58
SPEAKER_02: Great inflation.
39:01
SPEAKER_00: My dad is a very passionate person.
39:04
SPEAKER_00: Extremely the bullheises have passion in the bloodstream.
39:09
SPEAKER_02: So I kind of approached it just because he took such a hard line.
39:14
SPEAKER_02: My immediate knee-jerk reaction is I have to play devil's advocate.
39:18
SPEAKER_02: So I took the other side.
39:20
SPEAKER_02: What does it matter?
39:21
SPEAKER_02: I I said, My students today, they know as much geology as you did 20 years ago when I had you as a student, you know, and I I talked about that, and uh and I talked about Annibal's education.
39:33
SPEAKER_02: Annibal, I think, got a great education at NMU.
39:37
SPEAKER_02: So I said, what does it matter?
39:39
SPEAKER_02: I said, as long as, and here's the thing, right?
39:42
SPEAKER_02: As long as the advanced degrees maintain their integrity, because that's where the real shit happens, right?
39:51
SPEAKER_02: I mean, pardon my language, but that's where we're not solving world problems at my level and Annabelle's level and so on.
40:00
SPEAKER_02: But this is where the groundbreaking stuff happens, is at your level.
40:05
SPEAKER_02: And as long as that maintains its rigor and we still have people coming from other countries to be educated in the US in those advanced degrees, I'm like, what does it matter?
40:17
SPEAKER_01: I tend to agree with you.
40:18
SPEAKER_01: Like, despite all this bluff and bluster, there are always ways for good students to distinguish themselves from the average student, or people who are exceptionally passionate, or who are exceptionally motivated, or who are exceptionally interested.
40:35
SPEAKER_01: There are always ways to differentiate yourself.
40:38
SPEAKER_01: Chris, it's it's like the GPA thing you mentioned.
40:40
SPEAKER_01: Like, okay, so what that a whole bunch of students now have 4.0s.
40:44
SPEAKER_01: The top 10 are still the top 10.
40:46
SPEAKER_01: The top 20 are still the top 20 for the same reasons that existed in in my generation.
40:52
SPEAKER_01: So it's kind of like, okay, that you know, so things inflate.
40:55
SPEAKER_01: We just money's inflating, like we just figure it out, it's okay.
40:58
SPEAKER_01: Like I mean, for the most part.
41:00
SPEAKER_00: So it's it's sort of like okay, we can't.
41:02
SPEAKER_02: But how do you get to that point, right?
41:04
SPEAKER_02: How do you get to what are all the intangibles?
41:07
SPEAKER_02: What about the deadlines matter and doing things right the first time, all those life lessons?
41:14
SPEAKER_02: So that's where I said at the top of the episode, I'm really interested.
41:17
SPEAKER_02: Maybe some of our listeners own a business and they're seeing this coming out.
41:22
SPEAKER_02: I'm serious, I want to hear coming out.
41:26
SPEAKER_01: I agree completely.
41:26
SPEAKER_01: And and I think you know, that's a really good point.
41:29
SPEAKER_01: If you're uh an employer, especially or you're in the hiring position in the geosciences, you know, like someone like Andrew, Andrew DeWitt, who is hiring people for environmental consulting and hiring geoscientists.
41:39
SPEAKER_01: Like, let us know what are things that the geoscience education community could do better that you're seeing or or what are things that set students apart from other students in the in the hiring application process.
41:50
SPEAKER_01: So that's something that's always should always be important to educators like us, Chris.
41:55
SPEAKER_01: You know, how do we prepare students better to stand out amongst their their peer group to get the jobs they want?
41:59
SPEAKER_01: It's kind of goes back to fundamentals, you know.
42:01
SPEAKER_01: I think the for my surveying of employers, it's it's the same set of skills that were valued when you were going through school in the 1800s.
42:11
SPEAKER_01: Um is it is the can you think on your own?
42:16
SPEAKER_01: Can you be self-starter?
42:17
SPEAKER_01: Can you like visualize the feel?
42:19
SPEAKER_01: Do you have the the three-dimensional skill set that geology provides?
42:23
SPEAKER_01: Can you work with rocks and understand the complexity and the inherent uncertainty and things like that?
42:29
SPEAKER_01: I mean, it's those same kind of things that you kind of develop a knack for as a geoscience, as a good geoscience student.
42:35
SPEAKER_01: So I don't know.
42:36
SPEAKER_01: Um, I guess, Chris, what have you seen?
42:40
SPEAKER_01: I don't know how to ask this question.
42:42
SPEAKER_01: Your students, the ones who you think go on to have outstanding careers, whatever that means, in geoscience, let's say geoscience students that you've had in geology or geology class or cyber science that have gone on to geoscience careers in some way and have been outstanding in their careers.
43:01
SPEAKER_01: Do they do they always get the best grade?
43:04
SPEAKER_01: Are they always the most interested?
43:06
SPEAKER_01: Like, are there a a set of shared characteristics that you would ascribe to those students?
43:12
SPEAKER_01: I know you're a lumper.
43:14
SPEAKER_01: Just back to your watermelon days.
43:16
SPEAKER_02: I know you're a lumper, but man, I'll tell you, your question really just brought me down memory lane.
43:23
SPEAKER_02: Um it really did.
43:25
SPEAKER_02: Yeah, I would imagine I'm getting a good idea.
43:26
SPEAKER_02: I mean, you've had so many now.
43:28
SPEAKER_02: It's hard to man.
43:29
SPEAKER_02: I'm almost like emotional when I think about it.
43:31
SPEAKER_02: Um they're almost always like really good students because academically.
43:37
SPEAKER_02: Not always, not always, almost always.
43:40
SPEAKER_02: And but you they have this way of just figuring it out, and they're curious, they just I don't know, they stand out in so many different ways.
43:49
SPEAKER_02: But it's all the stuff that we've talked about that you talked about, you know, standing out, being low maintenance, but yet they're not low maintenance only because they ask questions, and those questions.
44:00
SPEAKER_02: Require attention, but it's attention that you just want to give.
44:03
SPEAKER_02: Like you're so you just want to stand up and hug them because they ask the question, you know?
44:08
SPEAKER_02: Like, oh my gosh.
44:09
SPEAKER_01: That's it.
44:09
SPEAKER_01: You know what?
44:10
SPEAKER_01: That's a really good point, Chris.
44:11
SPEAKER_01: Like, low maintenance does not mean you never see them.
44:14
SPEAKER_01: For me, low maintenance does not mean that I never see you as a student.
44:17
SPEAKER_01: It means that when I see you, it's interesting.
44:19
SPEAKER_01: That's low maintenance.
44:20
SPEAKER_01: I was not a low maintenance PhD student.
44:22
SPEAKER_01: You can ask, we can ask, you know, we should interview Tom Choco.
44:26
SPEAKER_01: Actually, we should do this.
44:27
SPEAKER_01: This would be fun to interview Tom Choco and say, like, what was uh young Jesse like as a PhD student?
44:32
SPEAKER_01: I was not low maintenance, I'll tell you that.
44:34
SPEAKER_01: And especially early on, I probably asked some high maintenance questions.
44:37
SPEAKER_01: But by the end, I think I was an interesting student.
44:41
SPEAKER_01: I was asked, I was like just passionate about the students.
44:43
SPEAKER_01: You made an impression.
44:44
SPEAKER_01: I know you did.
44:44
SPEAKER_01: Um, it was it was like uh, you know, I was low maintenance in the in the way that you mean it and that I mean it.
44:50
SPEAKER_01: Like one of my PhD students right now swings by regularly to ask questions.
44:55
SPEAKER_01: But the questions are always good and interesting and incite a discussion.
44:58
SPEAKER_01: It's not like uh okay, you should have figured that out on your own.
45:01
SPEAKER_01: You know, it's no it's it's it's interesting.
45:03
SPEAKER_01: So it's not low time, it's the right kind of question.
45:06
SPEAKER_01: And I forget who it was.
45:07
SPEAKER_01: Was it Dr.
45:08
SPEAKER_01: Um Stephanie Tompkins or maybe no, it was I think it was uh Dr.
45:12
SPEAKER_01: Angie Shaw who was who she said, do something you're passionate in because you'll work hard at that and therefore you'll be good at that.
45:20
SPEAKER_01: And uh that just rings true.
45:21
SPEAKER_01: Like, you know, find something that you're you're willing to work hard on because it's not gonna feel like work when you're spending and I know you feel that way about geology, and so do I.
45:32
SPEAKER_01: It's nine o'clock and we're recording a podcast episode.
45:35
SPEAKER_01: Of course we feel that way.
45:37
SPEAKER_02: That's right.
45:38
SPEAKER_02: That's right.
45:38
SPEAKER_02: Jenny just said, Chris, I'm a little bit sick of this.
45:42
SPEAKER_02: I really want to spend tonight with you, and you're gonna go down and talk to Jesse.
45:45
SPEAKER_02: I'm like, I know, sorry, Jenny, bye.
45:47
SPEAKER_01: Yeah, I know I know, bye.
45:49
SPEAKER_01: Keep the couch warm for me.
45:50
SPEAKER_01: Get the Doritos bag opened up for me.
45:52
SPEAKER_01: I'll be up in an hour.
45:53
SPEAKER_01: Yeah, you got that right.
45:54
SPEAKER_01: You got that right.
45:55
SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
45:56
SPEAKER_01: Oh, that's good stuff.
45:57
SPEAKER_02: Well, Jesse, I think that that's a good place to end.
46:00
SPEAKER_02: Again, I want to hear from our listeners.
46:02
SPEAKER_02: I I don't want this to be a negative thing because I don't I don't know where I stand on it.
46:06
SPEAKER_02: I uh you know, in education, I think we need to parallel more life.
46:10
SPEAKER_02: It's not all about content, it's about relationships, and you know, every job is that way, I think.
46:15
SPEAKER_02: And certain things matter.
46:17
SPEAKER_01: And you know, I agree.
46:19
SPEAKER_01: So things matter.
46:21
SPEAKER_01: That's right.
46:21
SPEAKER_01: But also there's a lot of impressive people, and there's a lot of ways to make to differentiate yourself from other people.
46:27
SPEAKER_02: That's right.
46:28
SPEAKER_02: And I want to end on this.
46:29
SPEAKER_02: The most impressive group that I've ever taken out west was this past year.
46:34
SPEAKER_01: Oh, really?
46:35
SPEAKER_02: Yes, all that we're saying.
46:38
SPEAKER_02: I I know we're taking the upper echelon, we're taking the best of the best, and and we get to pick them.
46:43
SPEAKER_02: They were amazing humans, and they're gonna do amazing things in life.
46:48
SPEAKER_01: That's great.
46:49
SPEAKER_01: The world's gonna be okay.
46:51
SPEAKER_01: You know, that's a positive note to end on, Chris.
46:53
SPEAKER_01: I like that.
46:54
SPEAKER_01: So, hey, with that, there's multiple ways to support us.
46:57
SPEAKER_01: First of all, we have merch available.
46:59
SPEAKER_01: You can go to our website, plantgeocast.com.
47:01
SPEAKER_01: There we have some merch, some hats, some shirts, all sorts of stuff that you can buy with the Planet Geo logo on it.
47:06
SPEAKER_01: You can also support us by downloading and using our Camp Geo Mobile app.
47:10
SPEAKER_01: We have tons of free content on there.
47:11
SPEAKER_01: These are visual podcast series.
47:13
SPEAKER_01: Geology is just such a visual science, it's really hard to get across the basic points.
47:18
SPEAKER_01: I mean, Chris, we try our best, but we need some images, some little visuals, and there we have it on our Camp Geo Mobile app.
47:23
SPEAKER_01: We have a bunch of free content.
47:25
SPEAKER_01: The introduction to geoscience is if you want to get a start on your geoscience college degree, you can start there with Camp Geo content and also some paid visual podcast series as well.
47:34
SPEAKER_01: So check it out, download that now.
47:35
SPEAKER_01: Send us an email, planetgeocast at gmail.com and follow us on all social medias.
47:38
SPEAKER_01: We're at Planet Geocast.
47:40
SPEAKER_01: Cheers.
47:40
SPEAKER_01: Peace.