When I entered college, I knew that I loved science and I loved the environment. High school taught me that really the only majors you could do in science was biology or chemistry, and either pre med or research were your only career options. So, due to this, I chose biology as my major, but I wasn’t really sure what to do with it. I enjoyed the environmental aspect of the major but not really the cells part. I was confused on what I wanted until I learned that there are so many majors and career options in science that I had no idea about! After consideration, I choose geology as my major.
Geology isn’t just the science of rocks, although that is a huge part of it. More specifically, it is the science of the earth’s physical structure and its history, and all of the things that happen within earth’s atmosphere. Yes, within geology you will study rocks, all the different types of rocks, fossils in rocks, and literally everything else involving rocks. But, you will also study things like ocean currents, the movement of the earth, and one of my favorite things, the climate! Geology is super important because it helps us to see how our earth is reacting to the things we are doing to it. We can see these reactions and then try our best to either solve the problems we are creating, or keep doing the things that we are doing right.
Hofstra University, specifically, offers so many different classes regarding geology and sustainability. There’s the basic classes like “Planet Earth” that is just like a college level earth science class. But, besides that, there are so many upper level courses about the most interesting parts of geology. One of my current classes is about the earth’s past climate. This study is called Paleoclimatology. That sounds like a super big word, as do many of the other higher level classes, but they are super interesting and dive really deep into these different aspects that is the study of geology.
One of the biggest things that made me nervous about becoming a geology major was that I had absolutely no idea what there was to do with it. The best thing to do for any major when you don’t know what to do, is to talk to a professor or advisor in the field. So, this is exactly what I did. There were so many options in geology that I had no idea were even a thing. There aren’t an influx of jobs in geology, but still many to choose from. There are the obvious jobs, go into research, become an earth science teacher, or a college professor in geology. You could also go into environmental engineering or environmental law. One of the less obvious jobs is an environmental consultant. Until a few months ago I didn’t even know what this meant. Upon learning about it, I realized this might be something super cool that I would want to try. Basically, an environmental consultant works for big companies and helps them to fix things within their company that are of environmental concern. For more info on environmental consulting, check out this awesome company.
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Geology is an awesome major that grants so many opportunities once you graduate from college. Not only that, but it’s super interesting and it makes me super happy just learning about these topics, and knowing that I am helping the environment as well.