Winter quarter of 2017, my last at Whatcom Community College. It was bittersweet. I was so excited to finish what I had been working on for the last 2 years, to begin the next chapter, but I was sad and rather nervous to leave the nurturing cocoon that was WCC.
That quarter, I had one class that I needed to graduate. As I had switched my Chemistry class to an audit the previous year, I still needed to have a lab science credit. As my goal is to spend a career digging in the ground for artifacts, my adviser suggested a Geology class. I also took Creative Writing and Acting I just for fun. The Creative Writing class was fun. I got to let my mind wander, write what I came up with (within guidelines of assignments), and turn them in. So fun! Acting I was a blast. I have done theatre all my life, both acting and directing. I was even co-leader of a theatre group for a while. I had so much fun playing theater games, writing scripts, and doing monologues. Between those two classes, it felt a little like I was on vacation... Geology class was challenging but fun. The course was called Physical Geology and covered the basics of rock identification and formation and plate tectonics (including volcanoes and earthquakes). The professor of that class was amazing. She had a masters in Geology and a doctorate in Education. That being the case, she knew the subject incredibly well and was fantastic at teaching in a way that engaged every learning style. I never saw one person looking bored. One of the best parts was our research project. A local condo community sits near the edge of a cliff that leads right down to the shore of our bay. They had noticed a growing trench or slump in the ground nearest the cliff and were concerned about what it meant for them. They asked our professor to have her students research possible causes and solutions and then have us present our finding to the community. It was great. We did a couple of field visits to collect data, formed groups, and developed topics of inquiry.
I was interested in our county's mining history. We had a booming coal business in the area for quite a while and I was interested in discovering the pitfalls of building above mines and whether or not any mines existed under the condo community. Several buddies from class joined me and we got to work. We discovered that pretty much our whole city was built above a total honeycomb of coal mines. What was disturbing though, was the discovery that a lot of the mines were never fully mapped and what maps we had were not always all that accurate. For instance, one part of town has sidewalks cracking and buildings shifting. According to the available data, the mines in the area are 300 feet below the surface and lower. This is NOT the case. Construction crews working in the area had run into vast, open mines at just 77 feet below the surface. Yikes! Our research did not uncover any mines directly under the condos, but who knows? The soil content would indicate that there would not have been any mines right there, but the one accurate map we found shows an arm of a mine within a half mile of the community... Other groups looked at seismic activity from the railroad, the seismic activity from the volcanoes that surround us, the presence of local and invasive plant species and their effect on soil erosion... It was an amazing project and I was so glad I got to be a part of it...
My time at WCC ended on a high note. I was excited to discover that, despite some difficulties, I would be wearing honors chords at graduation (GPA of 3.6!). I sent out grad announcements and prepared for my first quarter at WWU, which started THREE DAYS after the end of WCC's Winter quarter. Yeah. They have Spring Break a week before WCC. I got NO break... But I did get to move into a new and terrifying stage of my education.
Continuing soon...
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