Santorini Field Trip - 22nd-28th April

Kalimera! My final field trip as a student at UoB was with the other Master's students on a week-long trip to Santorini, Greece. It was a culmination of all our field skills and independent working to work through the island analysing plastic on beaches, the Minoan eruption, and how the ancient civilisation was affected by the volcano. In my opinion it was one of the best field trips I have been on with UoB, mostly due to the content, location, and I really like volcanics! The rocks on the island are really interesting so studying they wasn't much trouble and we could all enjoy the beautiful landscape while learning. When we returned to Bristol we finished off the unit with a proposal for a potential project that could be completed on Santorini and an open-field-notebook test. Below are some pictures that I feel best represent the trip!

Dissertation & Instrument Training

On the 3rd April 2025 I handed in my dissertation for the final time. The process was hard at times but in the end I hope it will be very rewarding. I received lots of useful training on lots of instruments and scientific procedures. I was tasked to write my own risk assessment for the whole process in the lab and was given extensive safety briefings and inductions to the labs I would be using. Thank you to Richard Brooker, Hayley Goodes, Ben Buse, Stuart Kearns, and my project supervisor Simon Kohn for all their help. 

Instruments and equipment used for my project are:

• Picking microscope
• Grinding papers
• Autopolisher
• Ultrasonic bath
• Thin sectioning machine
• IsoMet saw
• Carbon-coating machine
• Scanning electron microscope (SEM)
• Electronprobe microanalyser (EPMA)
• Fourier-transform infrared spectrometer (FTIR)
• OPUS software
• MatLab coding

UoB Offer Holder Days - 8th & 22nd March, 2nd April

The university held three offer holder days for prospective students that have been offered study at Bristol on the 8th March, 22nd March, and 2nd April. All three of which I worked at! The event ran similarly to open days I have helped at too, with prospective students and parents or guests asking us questions and attending tours and talks. At the same time as these days I was also in the final throws of my dissertation, so I could offer some almost real-time references or advice for the Master's (MSci) year!

UoB Open Day - 26/10/24

The University of Bristol held its first open day of the 2024/2025 academic year this weekend, on the 26th October 2024. I was among a selection of other student ambassadors for Earth Sciences spanning all course programmes that UoB has to offer (Geology, Palaeontology & Evolution, and Environmental Geoscience) and multiple years of study. Students and their families came by to the department to attend talks in our very own lecture theatre, G25, to then go on student-led tours around the building to visit the Earth Sciences Department's laboratories and the Wills Memorial Building Library. 

Then, visitors were directed into the department's main lab, G27, where current students and members of staff could talk about university life, courses, and course content. For each programme section was a display and interactive activity. (For us at Geology, we had microscopes and rock thin sections, and a flour-sand press to demonstrate compressional tectonics, but more on that later!)

In the morning, me and another student ambassador attended the main doors to the department. We welcomed visitors and directed them to G25 where the talks and tours took place. It was really refreshing to talk to newcomers who may choose Bristol and/or an Earth Sciences degree because I remember being new to university and Bristol, too. I hope I offered valuable insight to those that asked me questions and helped ease and welcome students that may have felt uneasy or anxious. We had visitors who had come to Bristol from far away, even a family I talked to who came straight from Ireland, who I helped get their bearings in Bristol.

Later on, I helped out in the main lab, G27. I helped with the demonstrations with microscopes and offered my help to anyone who may come by as the event was winding down. Earth Sciences is a rather niche subject choice, so we are all friendly and encouraging between students and professors. Our department is really a joy to be a part of, and I hope that came across to all the visitors! Below are some more pictures of what we had to show in G27! There are three images of microscope thin sections (which are quite hard to photograph!) and one of the compressional model with sand and flour (which you may see how 'faults' are formed [these are where you can trace lines where the sand and flour have broken] as compressional forces are added).

I really hope to help out at another Open Day or Offer Holder Day in the future if I can!