Let me tell you about pterosaur poop!

My senior thesis project is consuming my post-grad-school-admissions life, and I do not mind!  In fact, I'd rather be working on this research than anything else related to school this semester.  It's just frustrating because I wish I had more time to delve into all my questions, master the geochemistry, etc., but how often do we not wish we had more time?  I have to remember that my goal is to write a thesis and graduate so I can move onto bigger and better things and address even more interesting questions.  The thing is, I honestly didn't expect this question to become so interesting to me.  What is this indoctrination of insatiable curiosity for such random and obscure things?  I guess that's academia... and science.

Anyway, I started writing this because my UGA CURO Symposium talk is tomorrow, and I am updating a talk for the second time.  I haven't even started writing my thesis (!!!!!!!!!!!), and I am already giving a talk on this project for the third time.  By the end of May, I will have orally disseminated information about the Venezuelan island of Gran Roque (where I now am determined to visit one day) and the hypothetical pterosaur poop there at these occasions:

1. UGA Geology Club Brown Bag Talk
2. Oregon State University Open House for prospectives
3. UGA CURO Symposium
4. GSA Cordilleran Section Meeting in Fresno, CA

And in the next several months, I will have disseminated the same info in writing through:

1. My senior thesis
2. A paper (hopefully!!)

That is six outlets total, big and small, poster/oral presentation and papers, for this thing that I thought I might get to present a poster on at the Southeastern GSA Meeting.  Hard work?  Yes.  Am I going to be sleeping much in the next two months?  No.  Awesome?  Yes.  Exciting?  Yes.

The more I learn about my project, the more I learn how much I have yet to learn... and despite feeling inexperienced, stupid, rushed, and inadequate much of the time, I am enjoying this so far.

Also, I'm realizing just how truly nerdy I am becoming, and it blows my mind that, should I choose to continue in academia, I won't stop getting more and more nerdy until I retire.  I think my professors are nerdy, of course, but I can't even begin to fathom how nerdy they really are!!!  Is such level of nerdiness even healthy??  Scientists are crazy!  Every real scientist has to be a mad scientist...