Post a picture of your study area Thread

Fine, here you go. Sorry about the potato quality, my lights aren't very bright in my room! Notice the obligatory rocks on the left hand side.

Oh wow that looks so cool. Two monitors and the background merges. So cool!
What are the rocks for?

Rocks make me happy

So when you feel sad, you play with them? Why do they make you happy? This is so interesting. I'm so curious. Tell me!

Rocks are just good. They look great, you can hold them in your hand, you can stare at them and look at the lovely little details... I'm going to be studying rocks for the next four years so I might as well get very close and personal with them now! You can look at a rock and work out what happened to it whilst it was being formed. None of those rocks on my desk are particularly special, they're just random stuff I picked up on a beach, but they all have a little story to tell. I have some other slightly more 'exotic' rocks that aren't in the picture but they're too delicate to go on my desk, I'd just smash them if I knocked them over.

I'm seriously speechless. You could write a story about rocks since you're so passionate about them. What are you studying? For me it's books. I can't ever live withouth them

Well there's actually a book called "A Planet in a Pebble" which is literally a book about the history of the Earth using a pebble as a structure for the narrative. I'm studying Earth Sciences next year so I will be spending a lot of time staring at rocks They've got such a cool rock library there, just drawers and drawers of rocks. So exciting.

Books are wonderful, you can probably tell that my desk has quite a few on it and I just had a clear out of a lot of books recently so it's normally busier! I mainly read non-fiction though, I'm guessing you're more of a fiction person?

Earth science sounds really fun. I might read the book. It might make me appreciate the world more. Sounds pretty interesting actually.

Books are my life. I read more classics than anything else or well writtencontemporary novels but with non-fiction they have to be really good. I've read Bad-pharma and Bad science. That's about it.I would mostly read scientifc non-fiction or something I'm really interested in. Like history! Can you recommend any?

and here is my shelf for books and folders:

What university?

Honestly I'm useless with sophisticated fiction! His Dark Materials is still my favourite series that I have ever read but I think my love for it is more nostalgic than anything else. I've honestly not read fiction in a very long time and I just don't 'get' the appeal of books about real life. The only genre I ever really liked was fantasy and that's possibly one of the reasons why I went into the Earth Sciences. Some of the stuff that has happened on this planet is majestic beyond comprehension. The history of the planet is truly extraordinary and geology is really like piecing together an epic fantasy novel from scraps of information left behind in the geological record. I'm not sure if that's the most scientific analogy but it's undeniable that a large part of my motivation to go into Earth Sciences is childish wonder and awe

I'm not particularly well read in history books so I don't really think I can recommend any of those! If you do ever decide to foray into the world of Geology, I've probably got two books I'd recommend. The first is "The Goldilocks Planet" which is just a really good and well-written account of the history of the Earth in the context of life, and more specifically how it has remained habitable for life non-stop for the last 4 billion years. The other, which confirmed my choice to study Earth Sciences, is called "The Two-Mile Time Machine". This is a really extraordinary little book because it completely blew my preconceptions about the planet out of the water. The Earth seems like a pretty unchanging thing to the layman and reading a little about geology will change that view. Still, the view from classical geology is that change only becomes significant over millions of years but it has recently become apparent that the Earth is actually incredibly volatile, even at very short time scales. The Two-Mile Time Machine follows the record we have from the ice cores and it shows how, for apparently most of the Earth's history, the climate has actually been jumping around incredibly rapidly, at scales that humans are completely unable to imagine. There's a graph on one of the first pages which shows the temperature record of northern Greenland for last ~20,000 years and when I first saw it, I thought I had misread it because the degree of change apparent from the geological record is just so incredibly massive and fast, it changes your entire view of the world. The book is so incredible that I had to read it twice to actually comprehend it. Learning about the Earth Sciences really puts our position as humans into perspective and it makes you realise just how sensitive the planet is. It might just be me but I think it's absolutely wonderful, the Earth really is the most beautifully complex system in existence.

I'm very glad that you've read Bad-Pharma and Bad-Science, they're both very good (and very scary) books! Particularly Bad-Pharma.

Well I've never read HDM but heard good things about it. I know enough of fiction but I'm eager to read the two non-fiction you've mentioned. They honestly sound really interesting. This is going to sound well sad and make me look crazy but I'm going to read the books and make facts on them. To be honest, ever since reading Anne of Green Gables, I've started appreciating the Earth more because Anne just loves nature and I've just seen everything in her eyes.
The Earth is really beautiful.
Bad Pharma really changed my view on the pharmaceutial company. I'm glad since I'm doing Chemistry this September (hopefully)

I think I watched a film version of Anne of Green Gables yeeaarrss ago! Too long ago for me to remember anything (but was there Scarlet Fever?).

Bad Pharma is an interesting case because it's such a powerful attack at the corporate establishment. Healthcare is one of the most treasured industries we have and that book shows very clearly how awfully corrupted the pharmaceutical industry is. It was completely shocking, to be honest. It's unbelievable how much disregard there is towards human health in the very industry that is supposed to be caring most about it.

Nope. No fever that I can recall.

I agree. I loved the chapter on Drug reps. You can tell from this how very sly the industry is, trying to feed lies to doctors from the very beginning of their career. What I found most shocking was that drug trials weren't even carried out properly in some cases. It's ridiculous really. But thank goodness I read the book.

My revision cage.

Oh sorry, I was thinking of Little House on the Prairie (silly me)!

The drugs reps thing is terrible but the worst thing definitely is the fact that drug trials aren't carried out properly. I mean it's just utterly ridiculous that they can get away with not publishing most of their trials, I can't think of a more absurd form of legal corruption. Fortunately, it does seem like some kind of progress is being made on this front.

Oh I've not watched that. Is it a book too? I'd want to read it first.

Yh changes are being made. I'm happy this book is very popular. It means the industry have to be careful of what and how they carry out trials now because people are now aware of their carelessness.

What do you plan to do with Earth Science in the future? Become a geologist?

Little House on the Prairie is a book but it was made into a film series. I didn't particularly enjoy it but it was always on the TV when I was 10 or something so I watched a lot of it for some reason!

I'd like to go into academia, yeah. At the moment I'm most interested in Glaciology - Earth Sciences is bigger than just Geology. I love Geology but my real passion lies with some of the wider environmental sciences like Glaciology and Atmospheric physics.

Also I've just realised that Bad Science is hiding in my room photo, see if you can find it

Might give the book a go.

Atmospheri physics sounds really cool? What does it actually involve?

And found it! The red book on the shelf about the monitor. Thank God for ctrl + scroll.
How comes you have two monitors?

Atmospheric is the physics of the atmosphere - it's a very complex physical system which has a lot of very important effects on the environment, particularly with relation to climate change. Understanding the dynamics of the atmosphere is crucial if we are to predict how the atmosphere and hence the global environment is going to change in response to anthropogenic effects.

Dual monitors are great. They make multi-tasking much easier. It's something you can't really understand until you have them but once you start using multiple screens, you can't go back.