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Welcome to Earth on the Rocks, a show where we get to know the person behind the science over drinks. Each episode will highlight a new scientist in the earth and atmospheric sciences to learn more about their journey, what interests them, and who they are outside of their science.
Host: Shelby Rader
Producer: Cari Metz
Artwork: Connor Leimgruber
Board Operator: Kate Crum, Betsy Leija
Funding for this podcast was provided by the National Science Foundation grant EAR-2422824.
Hi, folks, and welcome back to Earth on the Rocks, the show where we get to know the person behind the science. I'm your host, Shelby Rader. And joining us today is Janie Wittmer. Janie, welcome to the show.
Janie:Hello. I feel welcome.
Shelby:So Janie, we're going to get to know you today over drinks. So what is your drink of choice or non choice if there's a drink that you don't want to have again?
Janie:My drink of choice is a drink that I've only had once and there's a little bit of circumstances to it. I was at my sister's bachelorette party and I was really tired and I was really hungry. And we went to a small cafe and I needed something to, you know, to pick me up. And they had this drink that was a Red Bull and then a couple different flavorings like there was pineapple, coconut, cherry, and lime And I think something else that I can't remember. So they mixed all of that together.
Janie:And then on the top, they poured heavy cream. And then when I got it, it was all a bottom layer that was clear and red. And on the top, it was white. And you mix it all together, and it becomes this beautiful pink. And I had that drink along with a peanut butter cookie that was dipped in chocolate.
Janie:I know that's not part of the drink, but it's important to my story.
Shelby:Yeah. It it goes well together.
Janie:Yeah. It and it was just it was just so amazing. So that's sort of like an introduction to what kind of drinks I prefer, which are as sugary and artificial as possible. It was honestly like a top 10 meal for me.
Shelby:Just the drink and a cookie.
Janie:The drink and a cookie. It was amazing.
Shelby:Yeah.
Janie:And
Shelby:have you tried to recreate it? Do you feel like you could? Or is this like you have to be there in the moment?
Janie:It would mean I would have to buy Red Bull. I've never done that before. And I don't think I want to cross that bridge.
Shelby:Yeah. I think that's that is fair. Because everybody that comes on the show, you know, has a drink of choice that we talk about. I've been pushing and I need to organize it at some point for us to have a departmental drink sharing where everybody brings their drink of choice because the spectrum is really broad from what people have preferred. And I think if you were able to recreate it and bring that, that would likely be a standout for many reasons.
Janie:I would have to try. Yeah. Yeah. For that occasion, I would definitely give myself the reasons to try.
Shelby:Yeah. Janie, you're a current grad student in the department. So if somebody were to ask you, like, how would you describe or classify yourself? How would you respond to that?
Janie:As far as what science I do, I would consider it hydrogeochemistry, which, you know, it's like water chemistry in a geologic setting. So some people study hydrogeology, which is how water flows through the earth, groundwater specifically. And then some people study geochemistry, which is all sort of chemistry that's related to geology. And hydrogeochemistry is the intersection so that you're considering not just how water flows through the earth, but how it interacts with the rocks it's going through along the way. So it's sort of both of them combined.
Shelby:And so we'll get into more specifics about some of the stuff that you're doing within that field, but sort of broadly, what are some of the things that people are interested in or questions they may be asking about how water flows through rocks and changes chemistry? Like, what are the applications of that? Or why should somebody care?
Janie:When water flows through the earth, it essentially picks up little bits of the rock that it's going through, and it gets like a like a flavoring in a sense. And depending on how fresh that rock is, it could be a lot more flavored and have a lot more of the chemistry of that rock that it picks up. And the chemistry of the rock determines things in the water. And a lot of us in The United States get our drinking water from groundwater. And so as water flows through underground and it picks up the chemistry of the rocks it's interacting with, it can pick up things that people maybe don't want to drink or maybe things that are beneficial to drink.
Janie:Like if you think about hard water, for example, like hard well water, it might have a higher concentration of elements like iron, for example, that give it a sort of metallic hard taste. And maybe people don't want to drink that. And in which case, it's good to know how the water is interacting with the rock. And at the same time, there are more serious applications to it as well, such as if there's a contamination site nearby, like a landfill or something. Landfills, I used to work in a job that interacted with a lot of landfills.
Janie:And they can leak. It happens. And so you have to test the groundwater nearby to make sure that there aren't chemicals leaking from the landfill into the drinking water that people might take from nearby.
Shelby:I think it's interesting you talk about how not only are there things in water that maybe sometimes people don't want to drink, but sometimes there are things in water that can be really beneficial. Because in the lab that I run, we use highly purified water. By purifying it, we're essentially trying to remove as much of the material from that water that is not just hydrogen and oxygen that we can. So sometimes when I first tell students about it, like this is very highly filtered water and it's as close to just pure H2O as we can get, they think, Oh, that would be great to drink. No.
Shelby:No, you don't want to do that because we need some of those dissolved components whenever we drink water. And if we don't have those in water, then the water basically tries its best to leach those and get those materials from wherever it can, which ends up, if you were to drink this really purified water, it would severely dehydrate you.
Janie:It would be really dangerous.
Shelby:Yeah, would be really dangerous. And so having this balance of we want some things dissolved in H2O, so that way the water is beneficial for us, but not too many of some things because then it can have some of these negative drawbacks. Yeah, so I think that's sort of a good way to think about it.
Janie:Another one that we could talk about is fluoride. The reason I got into geology was to study water because I wanted to study water contamination and natural groundwater contaminants and seeing how we could help with the groundwater that people drink, making that pure or understanding what makes it not good to drink essentially. One of the most common contaminants is fluoride actually. The number one is probably arsenic as far as inorganic groundwater contaminants and how much they affect people. Arsenic is probably the worst.
Janie:But then there is fluoride. And in a lot of regions that have too much fluoride in their rocks and it seeps into the water, it can cause too much bone growth. And you can see problems with skeletons and problems with teeth of the people that have to drink that groundwater too much because the fluoride content is too high.
Shelby:Yeah, think, again, for me even before this conversation, I don't know that I really gave enough thought to all the things that go into water that we drink because you just turn on a faucet or go to a water fountain or know fill up your water bottle at a filtered station and drink water. But depending on where you are regionally, geographically, globally, sort of the components of that water are going to be really different. And so I think thinking about it from a geologic perspective, if we're in this area, what are the things that are maybe at too high levels in our water or things that aren't high enough in our water and how can we sort of supplement that is, yeah, an interesting approach for how these things go together. So how did you decide you wanted to work on water quality? Because that's a pretty specific, you know, focus to get you into sort of a field.
Shelby:So was there something that prompted that interest when you were younger?
Janie:I guess so. I didn't have a really good idea of what I wanted to do for a long time. And when I got into high school, I didn't have any friends for the first year, year and a half of high school. That has changed. I have friends.
Janie:I'm not
Shelby:I've seen it with my own two eyes. You do have friends.
Janie:Thank you for backing me up. I do have friends now. But at the beginning of high school, I didn't have any friends at all. And then one girl that I knew started to invite me to volunteer with her after school at this thing called Youth Volunteer Corps. They ran through the Boys and Girls Club.
Janie:And it was just sort of like an everyday after school, come for an hour when you can, and there's a volunteer project. And at first, I was going because I thought it was incredible that somebody wanted me to be with And them then after a while, I continued to go like, we became friends along the way, but I continued to go even when she couldn't make it, and I continued to go even when. I knew I would be really up late doing homework or something like that, and I wouldn't get enough sleep. And I realized that, you know, helping people and volunteering felt really good. And in fact, it was the only thing that I really enjoyed doing at that point in my life.
Janie:And I was like, well, Okay. So I've discovered I like to help people. Crazy. It is a human thing to enjoy helping people. So I'm not unique in that.
Janie:I know. And I don't know what to do, so I'm going to try to help people, but I want to do it at a larger scale. Know, these volunteer projects are great, but they don't take a lot of skill. When you're trying to design a volunteer project for high schoolers, it kind of has to cater to all abilities and all ages. And I thought, you know, I have skills.
Janie:I'm good at school at least, so that should count for something. So I should look for a way I can use that in a job setting. And I kind of liked science. And I knew I was good at science. I was better at some other subjects.
Janie:I was better at writing, frankly. But I didn't know what I could do with that. So I decided to go into a science field. And I thought, well, what are some of the things that people need? And the number one thing that people need is water.
Janie:I I guess the number one thing people need is air. If you don't have air, you die sooner. But if you don't have water, you die faster than if you don't have food. And there are actual billions of people on earth that don't have safe and reliable access to clean drinking water, which is just a huge issue. And I thought, well, if groundwater contamination is just a part of that, and that's a science problem, then maybe I could look into that.
Janie:And I don't think that I can save the world, essentially. But I'd like to at least help. So I have this idea that I want to work on water and water quality. And I think, well, how do I study that? And there aren't a lot of programs for hydrology out there as far as college degrees go.
Janie:And so I thought, well, what's a field that studies water? Oh, geology, I guess. I actually looked it up on my undergrad's website, and I that geology under there, a subfield was hydrogeology. And I was like, Okay, that's close enough. Yeah.
Janie:And so I decided to start as a geology major. And so I've never really been into it for the rocks. The rocks are cool. Rocks are cool. I don't mind rocks, but it's not why I chose geology.
Janie:It was always about the water.
Shelby:Yeah. And so you went into undergrad knowing that's what you wanted to do, which I think is great, but also maybe a little unusual sometimes. And so the goal of this show, at least, is to maybe have more folks from high school decide, hey, these fields actually sound pretty useful. And so maybe I'd be interested in going into those. And so where did you go to undergrad?
Janie:I went to undergrad at Grand Valley State University, which is a state university in Michigan, in Grand Rapids, Michigan, which is the largest, fastest growing population center in Michigan. So people think of Michigan, they think of Detroit. Detroit is the biggest city. Grand Rapids is number two.
Shelby:And so while you're there, you sort of get more into the geological sciences and the hydrology aspect of that. Mhmm. And then when you graduate, do you go straight to grad school or you have some time off in between?
Janie:Well, if you wanted to go straight from undergrad to grad school I always knew I wanted to go to grad school. But if you wanted to go there straight from undergrad, you would have to apply your senior year. You have to spend time your senior year of undergrad applying to grad school, and it was one of the busiest times of my life. And I thought, I'm gonna I'm gonna wait to do this later. So I decided to take a gap year.
Janie:After I graduated, I worked at a water resource institute doing water research for a summer as a lab tech. And then I worked at an environmental consulting company for a year, almost exactly a year. And that was where I worked on the landfills that I mentioned earlier, as well as a lot of other applications for environmental consulting. And then it was while I was working there that I applied to grad schools and did my interviews and then eventually settled on Indiana University.
Shelby:And during this time when you're sort of working in these industry jobs, can you talk a little bit about some of the stuff that you got to do there or what that experience is like? So you've now been on both sides of things where now you're deep in the academic side of things and you were in sort of the industry before. And so what was the industry portion like? What did you get to do and what were some of the pros and cons of that?
Janie:I got to work at it was a regional company. And because our environmental department was sort of small, I got a lot of experience doing different things. If you're at a large environmental consulting company and you start there with no experience, then you might be in the field for like a number of years just doing field work, just collecting samples and working at a drill site and opening up small groundwater wells and taking samples with pumps like that. And then once you get to the next tier, you're writing reports. You might do a little bit of project management.
Janie:You might be talking to the clients, the companies, or people that own the land that you're sampling on, and talking to the government agencies that you're providing these reports to, to say, Yeah, we found this amount of contamination at these sites, and we recommend this sort of action.
Shelby:So for people that are listening, they may hear environmental consulting and maybe aren't super clear with what that means. So can you talk a little bit about the breadth of work that falls under this umbrella of an environmental consulting company, and then maybe a little more specifically about some of the stuff that you got to do while you were working there.
Janie:Environmental consulting, in essence, is being the middleman between somebody who owns land and the government. And the environmental consultant comes to the person that owns the land and will do the sampling of the water or the land that that person owns and test it to see if it falls within environmental regulations. And if it doesn't, or I guess even if it does, they have to communicate that to the government and say, these things are within reason, within regulation, these things are not. And if they're not, we need to do things like we need to prevent people from drinking the groundwater in this area, or we need to continue sampling to monitor if this is going get into a different area. Okay, this is one of the things that's boggling my mind about what environmental consulting does, but one of the ways that people remediate soil
Shelby:So clean it up if they found a problem.
Janie:Yeah. One of the ways that you clean up a soil if you find it has too much of toxic elements, like mercury or something, is they just dig it all up and they ship it away.
Shelby:Yes. Is
Janie:But it's just crazy to me that that is not even just an adequate solution, but one of the primary solutions for soil remediation specifically. And for groundwater remediation, it's to just pump out all the groundwater that has this contaminant in it, you're looking at something specific, until the concentration is low enough. Then I'm like, wow, that's just so wasteful, I guess. I don't know.
Shelby:Yeah, so I've known folks that are sort of in the lead contamination field because that's a really pressing issue, especially for areas that have older homes with leaded paint and things like that because lead can be detrimental to children's development if they're exposed to it. And so in those instances, oftentimes if they find areas that have lead contamination in the soil, just like you mentioned, one of the most effective ways to remediate that is to bring in a big dump truck, scoop up all of the contaminated soil, put down either some sort of barrier or just a large pile of fresh soil that they've brought in from elsewhere that does not have lead, so then you can sort of go on about your day. And honestly I'm not sure I guess it depends on who is in charge of the remediation what they do with the contaminated material but yeah you basically just haul it off and take it somewhere else where you can have it better contained.
Janie:Yeah there's no magic wand to wave and make the containment disappear or to suck it all out using a vacuum or something like that. It's very much brute force.
Shelby:Yeah. So when you were working for some of these companies that year between sort of undergrad and grad school, what were some of the things that you were yourself doing in this field?
Janie:A lot of it would involve driving out to plots of land, a lot of going off of maps, and exploring areas of land and looking for places to sample. You take little dirt samples. You might stick a rod in the ground to get a deeper dirt sample. One of the more interesting parts was drilling wells. And unless you're drilling it by hand, which is something I would not wish on anyone, actually.
Janie:But you have a little rig that comes in. It looks almost like a mini dozer sort of thing. And it's just a large machine that pushes a pipe into the ground as far as it can go. You might get in the range of tens of feet deep with those wells. If you want to go deeper, then you have to get a bigger rig.
Janie:But we didn't often need to go a lot deeper than that. Well, once you have the hole dug, you take a pump and you put a little tube in through the well, and it naturally the groundwater seeps in through the sides of the well, and you can pull out a water sample.
Shelby:So a lot of what you did, it sounds like, was going in the field and sampling various things to measure contaminants or metals or whatever the project called for?
Janie:That was part of it. Another part would be taking the data from those samples and formatting them into reports, spreadsheets. One of my favorite parts was drawing maps. It was sort of a traditional company that I worked at. They had old ways that they did things, and so they would draw their maps by hand.
Janie:When I got there, I was like, Wow, really?
Shelby:It's a lost art.
Janie:I guess so. So I had an entire map full of groundwater values for the height of the groundwater essentially, at what depth the groundwater started in each well on a point on a map. And you have a lot of points, and you have to draw groundwater contours between all these points so that you can see how the height of the water table is changing under the land surface.
Shelby:So basically, you're drilling these wells, you're seeing far below the surface do we have to go before we have an area that that has water. And then from these individual data points that that are sort of basically from your surface collection, you're then, by hand, drawing a three d image of where that groundwater is below the surface and how it changes.
Janie:Yeah, I guess you could call it like if you see a topographic map. It's it's like that. But for groundwater underneath.
Shelby:So during these projects, sort of who is typically hiring you or your company? Is this the government that's coming to you and saying, hey. We need this area scoped out. Is it sort of individual private landowners that are concerned or that need a well? Or is it somewhere in between?
Janie:Sometimes it'll be private landowners that want an idea of what the contamination is for their own benefit or for safety reasons, but oftentimes it's the government stepping in and strongly encouraging companies and landowners to get testing done so that they can show that they're in compliance with current regulations. And if you own something like a landfill, for example, you're obligated to show if you had a spill or a leak or something, you need to show that it didn't affect the neighboring properties, for
Shelby:example. So while you're there, you, at some point, decide, I think it's a good time for me to think about going back to grad school, which has now brought you here.
Janie:Well, actually, was my intent all along. I always knew I would go back to grad school, I just figured I needed more time to focus on that and probably a bit of a break from school.
Shelby:Yeah, I think, a lot of times I'll have students ask me, Should I take a gap year? Should I go straight to grad school? So my personal experience was I went straight from undergrad to grad school and obviously I made it through that process but I don't know that I would always recommend that. I think sometimes it's really nice to have some time where you try something and get that real world experience and see what that aspect of the science is like. And get a little bit of a break before you start to jump back in to some of the
Janie:You can make a real salary
Shelby:as well. Yes, the money helps.
Janie:Definitely helps.
Shelby:Yeah, because once you go back to grad school, you do get a stop in, but you're not living large on the
Janie:You stop better hope that you don't have debts to pay off because you can't afford to.
Shelby:Yeah. And so now, you're doing some really, really exciting and cool work, I think, that brings in all of these previous experiences of yours. So, can you talk a little bit about some of the research questions that you're looking at now here in your PhD program.
Janie:Yeah, so my research essentially focuses on how quickly rocks and water react, which is important for all the the reasons that I've said so far. So we do experiments with it looks really simple. You have a little vial, and you have your rock, and it's crushed up a bit so that there's some surface area. And then you put some water in your vial and you shake it up and you measure the concentration of different dissolved elements in your water and how those concentrations change over time. And that essentially will tell you how quickly the rock is reacting and what parts of the rock are dissolving faster than others, and things like that.
Janie:Our research applies to a lot of carbon capture technologies. So when rocks react with water, there's a chemical reaction that, again, it breaks down the rock, and part of that involves carbon dioxide. So in natural rain water, you have a little bit of carbon dioxide which is naturally found in the atmosphere that has dissolved into the rain water and made it very slightly acidic. And when you have your chemical reaction between your rock and your water, some of that acid from the carbon dioxide is used in the reaction and it converts the carbon dioxide into a more stable form, water based form that will stay in water longer and it won't turn back into carbon dioxide and re evaporate into the atmosphere essentially. And eventually you might have that water stable carbon species.
Janie:It might precipitate and form like a calcium carbonate or something like a rock, which is cool. And what people do is they see that this natural chemical process removes carbon dioxide effectively from the atmosphere and they think, well, hey, why don't we do that at a large scale? Why don't we make that happen a lot more than it currently does? And that will help with our carbon dioxide problem because we have too much of that in the atmosphere right now. So one of the solutions is a technology called enhanced rock weathering, which involves taking crushed up rock and spreading it over something like a farm field, for example.
Janie:And then as the crushed up rock interacts with rainwater, it does that process. It removes carbon dioxide from the atmosphere. And it also breaks up the rock and adds the nutrients from the rock. Because a lot of rocks contain ions and elements that are used in plant growth for nutrients. So it adds those to the rock and it can be sort of like a fertilizer.
Janie:So you're kind of killing two birds with one stone, ideally, and removing carbon dioxide from the atmosphere, adding rock nutrients to soil. Yeah, it's a win win.
Shelby:Yeah, so on this large scale, you're crushing up large volumes of different rocks, like you said, spreading them onto these farm fields. And so through that weathering process, that process will draw down or remove CO2 from the atmosphere while also releasing some of these essential nutrients that plants need because it's going to be things magnesium and iron and all of those that plants do need to be able to grow and function and produce fruits, which is what ultimately a lot of farming leads to. Yeah. And so the stuff that you all are working on, like you mentioned, is on sort of this smaller scale and you're doing these experiments where you're taking these vials and adding material and shaking it up and then seeing how those change over time. So if the rock is weathering and we know the elements that are in it, we can see how those are released into the water because we know what its composition was before this began and then see which ones are maybe releasing more effectively or more slowly.
Shelby:So what's sort of the time scale that all of this is happening on?
Janie:Well, traditionally geologists study reactions over really long periods of time, like hundreds of thousands of years. And we are trying to better quantify a system that takes one to ten years, or maybe less than one hundred years, something in a human time frame, because that's what we're really interested in as far as if this is going to work then we need to know within our lifetime and we need to see the change in the carbon dioxide levels in the atmosphere within our lifetime. So we can't wait around forever essentially. And so knowing exactly how quickly rock reacts on those shorter time scales will help us estimate, because it's hard to measure. It will help us estimate how fast the rocks in the field are reacting so that we know how often can we apply these rocks.
Janie:If people want to apply them every growing season, for example, then you're probably going to end up with too much rock there and it won't do that much good. So you want to balance it out. You want to say, well, maybe I'll apply this rock every five years, and then after five years I know it'll have weathered 50% of the rock away, and maybe that's enough where I can add some more. And quantifying how much carbon dioxide is removed in that time period, it's really hard to do in a field setting. There's just so many variables.
Janie:It's hard to get a direct measurement of that carbon dioxide reaction. So building better models is sort of where my research comes in. If we know exactly how fast the rock is reacting in a lab setting, then we can add in more of those variables and build better models to estimate what the field looks like.
Shelby:And I guess I would assume that when you're thinking of this in sort of the broad scheme of things, that all of this work, you have to find some balance between we want to try to maximize CO2 drawdown to sort of mitigate this global warming issue from carbon emissions, but you you also have to balance the release of nutrients from this rock material because you don't wanna release too many because even though many of these are essential nutrients, if there's too many of them at a certain level then they become detrimental to the plant's health. And then I'm also maybe assuming that you also have to think about the rocks that you're adding. So are there different rock tops that maybe are better or worse for these sorts of applications because of how they weather or what they contain or things like that? Are those parts of the equation that you all think about?
Janie:Yeah, those are all really, really good questions that people are actively discussing in this field because it's just in the trial stages. First of all, what kind of rocks that we're looking at, we need rocks that weather somewhat quickly. The rocks that weather quicker generally sequester more CO2. And so we want to use things that have maybe a lower silica content. So if listeners are familiar with mafic rocks, for example, like volcanic rocks, those generally are gonna be better for this process because they weather faster.
Janie:And you wanna make sure that the rocks that you're using don't have too much toxic material. Material that isn't good for plants at a very high concentration at all. And so things like nickel and chromium people are really interested in because in the the rocks that we're most interested in using because they weather the fastest, they also tend to have worrying amounts, not not too high, but high enough to be definitely concerned and to to bring it in as a factor. High amounts of toxic metals like chromium, for example, which we don't exactly want to put onto farm fields when we're going to be eating that food or something that we eat is going to be eating that food. Those toxic metals will get into their systems and get into our systems.
Janie:You're essentially slowly poisoning things. So it's important to understand exactly how much of those metals are going to be uptaken in the plants that you're putting these rocks on. Non point source pollution. This is a really big deal in geology and environmental science. When farms apply fertilizer, they essentially apply enough and more than enough so that their plants can get what they need because a certain amount of it will wash away.
Janie:And the amount that washes away, you have things like nitrogen and phosphorus in your fertilizers, and that will get into the water systems nearby. It'll change how the plants grow nearby. It'll change how ponds are balanced in their ecosystems. It can cause unhealthy algae to grow and lakes to become anoxic, which kills off the fish in that area, and it makes the lakes bad to drink and really smelly. So because that is a problem we can observe and say, that is already happening in force because of our general current farming practices.
Janie:And you only need you only need to look at, like, the Mississippi Delta to see it really bad. We don't want to also add too much nutrients, like you were saying, through these rock applications and further exacerbate that sort of issue.
Shelby:It seems like semi delicate balancing act. And so that's why I think the work that you're doing is so interesting because there are obvious and clear sort of big picture applications that could be incredibly beneficial to basically everybody on Earth at some level. But there's also a lot of science that's going on behind the scenes to make sure that things are done responsibly and in a way that's effective and that you don't have sort of offsetting positive and negative impact. And so, yeah, I think it's just a really, really pertinent and applicable field of science, I'm excited to see sort of what else you do with your project.
Janie:Yeah, I love working on it. I love seeing that clear application. Again, it's part of why I got into science in the first place.
Shelby:So speaking of that, if there are folks that are listening who may be thinking about the earth sciences as a field or thinking about graduate school, especially because you've sort of been in graduate school, you've worked before you came here, do you have any advice or words of wisdom for people that may be in that situation or things that maybe you've learned along the way that have been helpful?
Janie:I think the most helpful thing, besides continuing to work hard and just doing your best, is to keep an open mind about the possibilities and opportunities that you're given. A lot of the research that I got involved in on the way to here were things that I saw an opportunity and I was like, well, I don't know if that's something that I wanna do forever, but it sounds really interesting. So I'll see how it goes. And you just apply and you see how it goes, you apply yourself, and maybe certain things stick and you always learn something from it. And there's a lot of areas of science that I had no idea about and would never have considered if I hadn't just allowed my eyes to see what the other options are.
Shelby:Yeah, think to me, undergraduate and graduate careers, when you're going through as a student, the whole goal is to learn. And I think a lot of times people recognize that in terms of coursework and exams and in that context, but really it's like learning skills and learning if you like this or you don't like this. And I think that is to me maybe important as the coursework and the hands on activity is to figure out what you enjoy and what you don't enjoy and what you might be happy doing for the short term or for the long term. It's all about sort of figuring yourself out and what makes you happy. And so I think, like you said, take those opportunities because you never know.
Shelby:I think, you know, if you take an opportunity and you hate it, maybe that's that's just as valuable to learn early than Yeah. Than to, like, find something that you're sort of sort of okay with.
Janie:Yeah. I I think a lot of people in school and a lot of high schoolers might appreciate this sentiment. There are a lot of things that in the past I said, I'll never have to use this, and now I am using that. I'm using derivatives in my work. I'm using minerals in my work.
Janie:I remember being an undergrad thinking, I'm here for water science. I'm not here for these rocks. Why do I have to learn about the minerals in these rocks? And now my research is literally on minerals and how they interact with water, and I need that information. Same with physics and with chemistry concepts all the way back in high school when I would thought, this isn't really that important.
Janie:Why do I to remember this? But now that I'm seeing that, that sort of mindset is more trouble than it's worth, I think.
Shelby:Yeah, and I think, you know, to me one of the best skills that you can develop as a human is curiosity and then trying to find ways to apply something that maybe in the moment you think, What's the use of this? To something that you can find a use for it. Because if you can be open to that, then that's where you can get really creative when it comes to research but also you can learn a lot about how the world works which I think is sort of a good way to approach life. So Janie, we end every episode with our Yes Please segment where we each get a minute to talk passionately about something that is interesting to us in the moment. I always give folks a choice.
Shelby:Do you wanna go first or do you wanna go second?
Janie:You can go first.
Shelby:Okay. If you don't mind to time me, you can just let me know whenever my sort of time is winding down. And before I start, I wanna say this was not an original idea of mine, so I need to give a shout out to Annika, a student in the department of grad student. I hope to have her on the show at some point, but she sort of spurred this on, so I want to give credit where credit's due.
Janie:This topic or the one minute
Shelby:I think? This topic. Okay.
Janie:Yeah. Alright.
Shelby:Okay. If you're ready?
Janie:I'm ready.
Shelby:Okay. Yes, please. I think that more stores need to have small shopping carts. So you either get a basket, which if you have one or two items is fine, but then probably you don't need a basket. You can just carry it in your hands.
Shelby:Or you get a giant full size shopping cart, and sometimes you have a number of items that are either numbered enough or heavy enough that you don't want to carry them in a basket, but you also don't need a gigantic shopping cart. And so I really appreciate, and I think Annika appreciates those small shopping carts. Like, if you go to Kroger, they have the ones that are maybe two feet deep but have two tiers of cart on them or shelves on the cart. And we need more of those. They're so useful.
Shelby:They're so Twenty seconds. They're so versatile. I don't know why more stores don't have them. They're easier to maneuver. You could fit, like, three of them across an aisle instead of two of these giant carts.
Shelby:So I think that more stores need to have these moderate sized shopping carts for people to use.
Janie:Wow. Five seconds to spare. You've convinced me.
Shelby:Yeah. Look, I'm just telling you, think the baskets are unruly sometimes. They get heavy. They're awkward to carry.
Janie:But then you have the shame of when your cart gets too full and you have to go get one of the bigger ones. Maybe it's wishful thinking for the stores that they wish you would buy more.
Shelby:It's all about perspective too. I don't think there's any shame in that. You just go into a store, you get overzealous, you get a little bit more than you think. Trade it in for a bigger cart. That's fine.
Shelby:No You're only human. Exactly.
Janie:You have to buy things.
Shelby:Exactly. Alright. You ready, Janie?
Janie:Ready as I will ever be.
Shelby:Okay. This is Janie Wittmer's Yes, Please.
Janie:Yes, Please. You want to hear about my album of the year. So, I love electronic music a lot. I've loved it ever since I was maybe 13 or 14. And when I was first getting into it, I found that electronic music was really segregated.
Janie:It's one of the most segregated genres. It's very white male European. I I can only name one major DJ who isn't white male European or American actually.
Shelby:Thirty seconds.
Janie:Okay. So historically, electronic music has its roots in house and black culture, which is really cool. But anyway, my album of the year is called I Love My Computer. It's by this girl Nina Jurachi, who I've been following for
Shelby:Fifteen?
Janie:A while. And she's about the same age as me. And so it makes it really cool that she made just this, like, really amazing album. No skips. It's seamless.
Janie:Love. Anyway, she's doing everything I wish I could in a different life.
Shelby:Amazing. I wrote that down. Okay. I'm gonna give it a listen.
Janie:Okay.
Shelby:Check it out.
Janie:I would really, really recommend it. It's
Shelby:amazing. That's typically not my genre, but I'm like I said before, I'm willing to expand my horizons and see maybe it maybe it is. I'll give it a try. Sure. Sounds worth checking out.
Janie:Yeah. It's it's a really amazing album. Best album I've heard in, like, two years.
Shelby:So That's high praise.
Janie:Well, it is if you like electronic music. So if you don't like it, I will not be offended. Yeah. It's okay. Yeah.
Shelby:Janie, thank you for coming on. This has been a really great episode. I appreciate you taking the time. And for folks listening, join us next week when we'll have the midseason finale. We'll see you then.
Shelby:Earth on the rocks is produced by Cari Metz with artwork provided by Connor Leimgruber, with technical recording managed by Kate Crum and Betsy Leija. Funding for this podcast was provided by the National Science Foundation grant EAR Dash2422824.