Gymnast to Geoscientist - GeoGirl Dr. Rachel Phillips
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[00:00:00]
I can't see you like, I mean, you and your technical difficulties, Dr. Reimink. you need to take back every bad thing you ever said about me and how I'm old and non technical because, I'm not having any problems. And I just spent the last [00:00:30] hour looking at a frozen Jesse Reimink on the screen.
chris_2_09-04-2024_210826: I mean,
Dr. Jesse Reimink: You know,
I,
chris_2_09-04-2024_210826: with like, seriously, you had your mouth open and you're, you're leaning forward. You might've had some stuff in your mouth. Biddle coming out of your mouth. I don't know. It was like, not a good look.
Dr. Jesse Reimink: me in a particularly unprofessional looking view there. My, my, my video froze during our interview. and then I was hidden and I couldn't actually determine that my video was frozen. So, so we just, you know, just went through it. it was great. So, [00:01:00] Rachel Phillips, Dr.
Phillips. I mean, Also known as GeoGirl. Rachel has a amazing YouTube channel called GeoGirl, at GeoGirl, but Rachel has her PhD in geology from a university of Texas, El Paso. She worked on some really cool biogeochemistry, paleoceanography stuff, did an amazing job. I mean, looks like an amazing PhD from the outset, but also considering that she did this during COVID.
I mean,
chris_2_09-04-2024_210826: Yeah,
Dr. Jesse Reimink: Unbelievable. Right. And then also started this amazing YouTube channel. [00:01:30] She's now working as a postdoc at university of South Carolina, working on really geoeducation research and sort of the misconceptions around and geoscience, and I don't know, Chris, I, she's impressive. Very, very, very impressive.
chris_2_09-04-2024_210826: exactly. And what she had to say about what those misconceptions were about the field of geology. she had the best insights I've ever actually. Some of the stuff she talked about, I haven't even thought about, to be honest with you. What do you think?
Dr. Jesse Reimink: I agree completely brought up things that I [00:02:00] had not even considered. And I'm in this
world, you know, like
chris_2_09-04-2024_210826: on, hold on, Jesse. Let me backtrack here a second. when we talk about misconceptions of geology, we're not talking about, you know, diamond forms from coal. Those are not the
misconceptions we're
really referring to.
Dr. Jesse Reimink: That's a really good point. It's more like, what do people think a geologist is or does, or, what their background is or what their job is? It's misconceptions about that, which are way different and actually way more important because these are the ones that prevent people from being interested in [00:02:30] geology, from even caring where a diamond came from, right?
Like
it's almost
chris_2_09-04-2024_210826: Or considering, going in that direction. Absolutely. A hundred
Dr. Jesse Reimink: Totally. It's just important. And I'm so excited to see where her research goes. I mean, she kind of downplayed it a little bit, but these NSF postdocs are no joke. They're very serious to get. It's a big deal to get one. And then to kind of take it somewhere and do this type of work is really an amazing, amazing feat.
So Rachel is just very, very impressive. and I'm I'm really
excited to see where this [00:03:00] research goes. it's super
chris_2_09-04-2024_210826: I'm excited to have the opportunity to talk to her again, later on down the road to find out, where are we going next? What are, what are the conclusions and how do we fix it?
Dr. Jesse Reimink: That's right. And I'm excited to see where the channel goes to. Where does she take this channel? This YouTube following she has, which is very large. It's massive following and she makes amazing videos that are both lecture format and she started during graduate school during COVID while she was TAing.
Like that's just amazing. I, I couldn't put two thoughts together [00:03:30] during regular graduate school and there was not a pandemic going on. And I was not trying to put together a YouTube channel. I mean, it's just an
impressive feat. And I
chris_2_09-04-2024_210826: That's right. But she also does a really good job. I can't point at you. That's the thing. I can't let it be like doing that.
I can't see you, you know, anyway.
Dr. Jesse Reimink: It's really nice. I'm, I'm hidden back
chris_2_09-04-2024_210826: Oh,
Dr. Jesse Reimink: and I just can avoid all the
abuse.
chris_2_09-04-2024_210826: All right. So, but she does a really good job on GeoGirl.
We're with the graphics. I mean, they're, they're amazing. And, and that's something that you and I are wholeheartedly aligned with that [00:04:00] geology needs to be as visual as it can possibly be. her channel does a really good job of incorporating that aspect into geoscience as well.
Dr. Jesse Reimink: Absolutely. So, you know, if you're listening to this, and you're interested in learning more about Rachel, you can head over to geogirlscience. com. That's her website. We'll put the link in the show notes, And her YouTube channel is GeoGirl and she's got a lot of stuff.
You have basically she has YouTube courses that are kind of partitioned out kind of like our Camp Geo content except in video form. There's earth history, [00:04:30] sedimentology, mineralogy, geochemistry, all sorts of stuff. Bye. YouTube courses or YouTube playlists. There's merch she has available. Her website's really great.
Check it out. She also has resources, textbooks, like her recommended textbook, for all sorts of different stuff. Got a ton of content and she has some really interesting, developments ongoing with the geological side of America, for instance, and collaborating on making videos and has a fellowship there.
So, so check out her stuff. Rachel's great, very impressive. And Here's our interview with Rachel [00:05:00] Phillips.
okay. Dr.
Rachel Phillips, welcome to Planet Geo. It's a real pleasure to have you here. Thanks for joining us.
Dr. Rachel Phillips: Thank you so much for having me. I'm so excited to be here.
Dr. Jesse Reimink: Yeah, this is, great. So, I think probably, people listening might know you as GeoGirl. Um, and, uh, We're going to kind of center, I don't know if we'll center the conversation around that, but that'll be part of our conversation, I guess. So we always have a traditional opening and actually closing question and Chris is best at asking the opening [00:05:30] questions.
So we always, Chris, do you want to, you want to lead out with the
chris_1_09-04-2024_193949: Uh, I'll take it. Sure, So Rachel, we always ask our guests, what got you into geoscience? Like what was your moment? Because Jesse and I, we each have our own and it's, I don't know, it's a very personal story to us and it's, it was very impactful when we realized that it happened.
So what got you into this?
Dr. Rachel Phillips: Yeah, I too have a kind of a story that goes along with this, and mine is, [00:06:00] I think kind of unique because interestingly, I have two geology parents, And so I grew up kind of in this house, you know, filled with rock shelves and, parents always wanted to go camping and show me the rocks and all these things.
And I tell you, my brother was interested and I was. I was so, so uninterested. I thought rocks were so boring. And I was like, Ew, that's gross. That's what my parents did. And so I just wanted nothing to do [00:06:30] with it. but I didn't know what I wanted to do. And so I, when I went to college, I, Was essentially, I was going on a golf scholarship, so I was going for athletics and then I was just like, well, I have to pick a major.
So my dad was like, engineers make money and do engineering. So I did engineering and I didn't really love it. It wasn't what I wanted. and then I took a chemistry class and I really fell in love with that. I think because the. Professor was so great. and so I wanted to change my major to chemistry, uh, but my coach said there were [00:07:00] too many labs that overlapped with practice.
So then I was looking into other majors and my geology parents conveniently pointed out that if I majored in geology, I could minor in chemistry and then I just have to do the lectures, not the lab portions. So I was like, I will give it. a shot, one semester, and that's it, and we'll see. And I quickly realized that geology was way more than what I thought, which was just rocks, or [00:07:30] oil, or whatever.
I had these misperceptions, which we'll get into later, but I really didn't understand what all it encompassed, and then I realized that it was earth, like geo means earth, and you could study everything, the chemistry of what's going on and I thought that was so cool, and so I, quickly fell in love with it.
But yeah, I had this just weird, story of like, having these Misperceptions of what geology is, even with [00:08:00] geologist parents,
and then figuring it out on my own because I didn't want to listen to them. I
chris_1_09-04-2024_193949: So do I. We might not get
past question one.
Dr. Jesse Reimink: So many
chris_1_09-04-2024_193949: Are you jumping in Jesse? Cause I
got followups
Dr. Jesse Reimink: I know I'm, I'm jump.
I'm definitely jumping in here. So
I want to, okay. I'm going to try and filter down. What did your parents do for work as geologists? And then what turned you off about it? I guess maybe we'll talk about misconceptions later, but like, what was, what was the negative [00:08:30] about, was it just that they were parents or what, what was it? Yeah.
Dr. Rachel Phillips: That was a big part, I think.
Um,
Dr. Jesse Reimink: mean like everybody, right?
Dr. Rachel Phillips: yeah, exactly. But I, um, both my mom and my dad went to, they met in grad school at University of Texas at El Paso, which eventually is where I went.
Again, resisting the whole time, but I eventually fell, found myself there. I don't know,
but, um, both my mom and dad were more hard rock in terms of their research.
But then of course it was the 1980s and [00:09:00] oil was booming and everything.
chris_1_09-04-2024_193949: soft rock.
Dr. Rachel Phillips: yeah, so they got really great offers from ARCO, which was eventually bought out by BP. And, they worked for ARCO. Well, my mom did. And then my dad. was with her, begged for a job and they gave him one too. He's going to be mad that I mentioned that if he
listens. Um, but, but
Dr. Jesse Reimink: happened.
Dr. Rachel Phillips: well, he even, he initially got a job at Exxon and then moved to Argo, but yeah, they worked in amazing places. They moved to Alaska right after grad school and worked there for like seven years. [00:09:30] It was
insane. And then, worked a long time before they had us, but, my mom was.
And I was.
a Field exploration geologist. She eventually became the head of all geologic research at Argo. um, and
my dad was more, you know, in the computer kind of guy excel sheets and stuff, but they were exploration geoscientists essentially, and I.
Dr. Jesse Reimink: hard rock
geology field, where their passion was.
Dr. Rachel Phillips: yeah, my mom Ig Pet, Med Pet, and my dad Economic Geology, uh, he really loved, looking for really [00:10:00] expensive minerals, um,
and, and I I think it was a mixture of, oh gross, that's what my parents did, and, um, it's just so funny.
I, because we grew up in this house full of rocks and my parents, of course, were always telling me, Oh, look how cool this is. And I just saw rock. I think I just got it in my head that that's boring. And then I also specifically remember having a conversation with my mom. just because of, I don't know how, I guess, how old the field was.
I [00:10:30] thought it was, and I remember having a conversation with her when I was deciding to switch my major, and I was like, but isn't it all done? Like, isn't everything mapped? Isn't everything figured out? Like, I just assumed everything was, answered. had no idea that there were still so many things to do in geology, and I don't know where I got that mindset, but, it's just what I thought.
And now, you know, and we'll get to it, but now it's, like, my mission to figure out why. students have this mindset and how to transform it because there
is so [00:11:00] many opportunities in geoscience, but people don't know that. And I didn't even know that. So, I just had this moment where she, of course, answered and was like, no, there's so much more
and that was a really important conversation.
I remember us having. And so that really changed my mind about what geoscience could be for me.
Dr. Jesse Reimink: I mean, everything your
parents do is just, is just uncool by definition. I mean, Chris had the same experience. I had, there were parts of my life that I swore I would never do because my parents did it. And then I ended up doing it, and Chris is the [00:11:30] same, you know,
chris_1_09-04-2024_193949: I'm the same. I was dragged kicking and screaming into this. Um,
I knew a couple things when I went to college and one of them was that I wasn't going to do anything science related and I certainly wasn't going to become a teacher, which I didn't do originally anyway, but I was just, dragged like in this direction very unwillingly.
It was so weird. And my own kids, I have two kids that are gone and they're living their lives They don't want anything to do with geology or rocks, or they didn't even [00:12:00] listen to my podcast. It's, it's really disappointing. I gotta, I gotta work
on
Dr. Rachel Phillips: we'll
see. We'll see where they end up.
Dr. Jesse Reimink: Yeah. That's right. We're still, I think there's still hope for Bella. Bella is still, there's still hope. She'll come around,
Dr. Rachel Phillips: The funny part is I was the one that hated listening to my parents ramble on about the rocks and I was like, just get those away from me. My brother loved them and I became the geologist and he became a writer.
chris_1_09-04-2024_193949: Oh, wow. so
you're the favored one now. Yeah. You're the
Dr. Jesse Reimink: Okay. so have your parents made an appearance on the GeoGirl, [00:12:30] channel
Dr. Rachel Phillips: Not in video form. My mom comments on every video.
chris_1_09-04-2024_193949: Okay.
So they both
listen or
Dr. Rachel Phillips: is commenting. No, my dad could care less.
chris_1_09-04-2024_193949: He doesn't watch.
Dr. Rachel Phillips: I think he watches like a bit, but I go really deep and he's like, I don't need all this.
I got
this years ago. My mom! Loves it. She will dive deep in any topic. She will call me afterwards and be like, Oh, what about this?
And we'll keep talking about it for like an hour. Like we'll just go on. [00:13:00] But yeah, my dad, he's done with the learning.
Dr. Jesse Reimink: that's, uh, that's very similar. Well, Chris's mom Joyce is, we get a lot of emails from Joyce. With various things. Usually they're a little bit persnickety because, you know, her son isn't getting enough credit for something or he's not getting enough airtime or something like that, usually. so
chris_1_09-04-2024_193949: Yeah. She, my mom pretends to listen. Yours actually listens. Mine, whenever I go over there on Friday afternoon, she's sleeping and I'm in the background and it's just,
Dr. Rachel Phillips: Oh, no, [00:13:30] I find, I find my mom Falling asleep to me all the time and
then she'll call me after I post videos and she'll be like, what about this? And I'm like mom I answered that at seven minutes in the video
Listen to
Dr. Jesse Reimink: Yeah. Oh, that's so good. Oh man. This is funny. I like the way this worked out. This is very funny. So, um, Chris, did you have other questions about this that,
chris_1_09-04-2024_193949: I all right, just, I
one really quick one that I'm just curious about it really, I want to get into the GeoGirl thing, but, so you [00:14:00] went to college on a golf scholarship, but you were a really well established gymnast. How, how did you make that transition?
Dr. Rachel Phillips: Yeah, how do you know I
was
chris_1_09-04-2024_193949: Uh, we do our research, Rachel. Come on now. we,
we
Dr. Jesse Reimink: Yeah. Chris is just, this is Chris showing off the deep dive.
Dr. Rachel Phillips: yeah, geez. Okay. No, I grew up in Plano, Texas because well, ARCO was headquarters there. And then, when my parents moved from Alaska to Plano, they then had me and my [00:14:30] brother and, um, I grew up there my whole life And, In Plano, is where the World Olympic Gymnastics Academy is, which now has multiple branches.
and that is where I, I was coached by Cecile and Laurent Landy, who are now, well, for the past few years, the like Olympic coaches, they coach Simone
and the rest of the team. So they're very good coaches and that gym has produced a lot of, um, Olympic gymnast. And so it was very high level.
And, I was [00:15:00] there's essentially two types of gymnasts that go there. There's the ones that compete to the point of getting a college scholarship and the ones that are Olympic material, and
I, until I was about 14, they, you know, they try and make everybody Olympians until they can't anymore.
And I was on that trajectory and then got some injuries and then I I think I was on the college trajectory, which is still high level, but not as much. And so I was set to work on getting a scholarship to college. And I was like sophomore in high school, that's when they start looking to sign [00:15:30] gymnasts.
And so I was just about to do that. then I, tore basically everything in my knees. And, um, And so then I, essentially the college was off the table, so I quit and this gym was very intense. We trained eight hours a day and, I went to school for two hours a day.
And so we went to this special school in Plano that is essentially just for very high level athletes.
And it was mainly gymnasts from this gym, and so I just had like senior year left, [00:16:00] essentially, and I was like, well, I can't just like, Go to a normal school now, I gotta do some sort of sport. And so my dad had me in my big knee brace that I was still in. He was like, let's try golf because you don't have to do any crazy movements for that.
Um, so I went to this swing coach and he was like, you're really like, naturally good at this because you're so flexible and your core is very strong. And so I was like, all right, well, cool. Let's, go with this. And so I, could only do like putting and shipping at the, at the time, cause I wasn't allowed to twist.
But, um, I [00:16:30] eventually worked up with him to the point that I got a scholarship to a junior college. and I went to Waco for two years and then transferred to Arlington where I, where I finished out my bachelor's. And
so I did. Golf, uh, on scholarship for, yeah,
chris_1_09-04-2024_193949: short order. I mean, that's amazing.
Dr. Rachel Phillips: it
was very quick, I was surprised that I actually got a scholarship,
Dr. Jesse Reimink: Yeah. I mean, that's really impressive. I, I have a, well, this will probably feed back a little bit [00:17:00] into later conversations, but, are sports still a major part of your life
Dr. Rachel Phillips: not really just because of time. Well,
1, you can't really ever do. any gymnastics things past,
past a certain point in life, and then golf, you can do a lot, but it takes a lot of time.
Dr. Jesse Reimink: Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.
Dr. Rachel Phillips: that's
something I don't,
I
Dr. Jesse Reimink: that's not a, uh, a sport you can do on a graduate student salary or
Dr. Rachel Phillips: No.
And yeah, in college, of course, we're in Dallas, [00:17:30] where I ended up in Arlington, which is essentially Dallas. and you have all these really expensive, beautiful golf courses around and we had essentially free passes to whatever course we wanted to
go to. Yeah. And so, you know, as long as we were on the team, we brought our bag and they knew who we were, we could just go.
I remember graduating, going to a golf course and be like, Oh my God, I have to pay?
Dr. Jesse Reimink: That's funny. What the heck?
Dr. Rachel Phillips: Yeah,
it's
expensive.
Dr. Jesse Reimink: uh, Yeah,
my, my parents were both golf coaches at various. [00:18:00] And that was one of the things that I did not ever want to do and uh, I still don't particularly love golf.
uh, anyway, um, okay, Rachel, let's, let's move in. Tell us, can you. tell us the origin story of your YouTube channel? Which is great, by the way.
Your videos are amazing. It's very, very, very
well done. So, what's
the origin story of this whole, whole adventure?
Dr. Rachel Phillips: Yeah, so I was a teaching assistant, graduate teaching assistant in grad school, and I was teaching some labs in, [00:18:30] spring of 2020. So, TA plus 2020 equals remote lectures. I recorded some lectures for my students and I tried putting them on blackboard, but it was uploading too slowly and the storage was weird.
So I ended up putting them on YouTube and I sent my students the links and then I started putting more up there because I quickly realized that I was getting a lot of feedback from people in comments saying, Oh, these are so helpful. Essentially anybody but my students. And, um, [00:19:00] and
so I, you know, wanted to keep helping people, you know, when I was studying for exams or even people saying, you know, Oh, it's just so helpful.
helping them learn more about a topic they're just have general interest in. And so I started making more and then I had people suggesting topics and I was like, Oh, actually, I need to study that because I had my PhD qualifying exams coming up. And so I needed to study anyway. And I know for me, I've always learned best when I learn something enough to teach [00:19:30] it.
So I tried really hard to study all these broad geoscience topics to study for my comprehensive exams. And, um, that was kind of the beginning of it. And then the continuation was essentially just cause I saw the impact of it. And essentially the moment that I got my first comments saying, I am majoring in this because of you.
That was it. Then I was like, I got to do this forever.
chris_1_09-04-2024_193949: That's really cool. Have you been doing it since 2020
Dr. Rachel Phillips: yeah, since
[00:20:00] September, well, late August, 2020. Yeah. So four, four years
now. Yeah. Thank
Dr. Jesse Reimink: Well, that is, first of all, amazingly impressive to do this during graduate school, when your time is, you.
know, I mean, that's unbelievable to be able to be doing all of the stuff that you've done
Dr. Rachel Phillips: It was a nice break. People are
always like, oh, how do you, do all that with the grad work? But it was my break. It was like, not work for me. I, I
found it extremely fun to like, Push aside the research for a second and do something like a video. So,
Dr. Jesse Reimink: That's really interesting. So I have a question, [00:20:30] because my sense is that idea about Or your comment about studying for candidacy with this. This seems like an unbelievable way to study for candidacy, actually. you know, forcing yourself to teach, yourself all the basics that you have to learn for candidacy.
Was it incredibly productive? I mean, did you just crush your candidacy because of all this work you've done?
Okay.
Dr. Rachel Phillips: no, no, no,
Dr. Jesse Reimink: know if I believe that, but,
Dr. Rachel Phillips: I, well, the, first part, which is the, just general knowledge, [00:21:00] questionnaire type thing. Type exam from your committee that part. I hadn't been doing it that long by them.
I had only been doing it about a year and only broad topics for about 1 semester by the
time I did that.
So I didn't know as much as I. Well, no, now, through doing the channel, but, yeah, I did not pass with flying color. I mean, they were, I think, nicer to me than, than I give myself credit for, because I wish I had answered things differently, but,
Yeah.
I mean, obviously, once it came to, my actual, like, candidate, PhD [00:21:30] proposal type thing, that was better, because that was my own research, but the broad, exam, that was not as pretty.
Dr. Jesse Reimink: I mean, I think none of they're never pretty, even when they are really, really well done. I mean, point is to like get you to a point where you don't know. I mean, you're always going to end the questions with, I don't know. So yeah,
anyway. So I'm sure you did very well anyway. Okay.
chris_1_09-04-2024_193949: So Rachel, So what is your, I mean, we know why you got into it, but why do you keep doing it? What's [00:22:00] your goal? What do you want to accomplish with this really, really good, well done Geo girl channel? What are you trying to do?
Dr. Rachel Phillips: Well, at first, again, it was mainly just for students and obviously I started it as just lectures. It's still mainly just lecture format, but less so in a way, which I'll get to, but yeah, I started it very much for undergraduate, even sometimes graduate students that are studying for exams and very specific courses.
I [00:22:30] went through like, certain 80s petrology, how to identify certain rocks and thin section like nobody random on the street is going to need to know that, but
I was posting these videos because I, you know, wanted to help students. And then the more that I got comments saying, oh, I'm not a student.
I'm just interested in geoscience and learning more. I started making more broadly appealing videos. And so. It's kind of morphed into just making study guides essentially for students, and [00:23:00] now the goal is more to still help students understand certain concepts, but also promote kind of the diversity of geoscience out there.
And I think for me, there's a lot out there that's like PBS Eons and stuff that covers. There's certain bits of the things that I cover, but to a very surface level degree, and I like to really dive deep so people can have the, the answers to the questions they're left with after those videos, like, but why this?
And I [00:23:30] try and answer all the but whys. And really go deep so that they can get to like the end question, which is like, you know, something that I always say, like, at the end of a lot of my videos, I'm like, but we still don't know this. So if you're interested in going to the, you know, those research, go do
it.
So, Yeah.
love kind of doing very deep dives so that people, 1, can have access to that kind of information and 2, can whether they're a student or just interested in geoscience can really, like, Be able to learn this stuff [00:24:00] and dive deeper and know where to go for more resources or if they want to get into it.
So that's kind of now the goal is just to get more people interested.
Dr. Jesse Reimink: Yeah. I really liked the way you phrased that. I think it was, you cover the but how question at the end. Is that what you said? The but hows?
But why? Yeah. But why? Yeah.
I like that. That's really, that's really great. And this is one thing that Chris, I don't know Chris, how you feel about this, but that's always impresses me about frankly, our listeners on this [00:24:30] podcast is how deep people want to go.
In many cases, like, you know, there's really no limit to how deep people are interested in, particularly in geology, maybe want to go on a topic. It's a really, it's a really interesting phenomenon. I'm always impressed by that.
Dr. Rachel Phillips: Oh yeah. The, the, my commenters still find a but why at the end of my videos.
Dr. Jesse Reimink: Yeah, yeah. So what is your, okay, you kind of alluded to sort of how it's changed or how you've, tweaked or something like that. Since then, What are your, like, [00:25:00] favorite things? What's your favorite video? Or what's your, what's one you kind of like? You loved making or you love the process behind, or you love the
final product? I don't know.
Dr. Rachel Phillips: that's a very hard question, but
I prepared before this and tried to think of, think of my
favorite.
Dr. Jesse Reimink: all these, uh, yeah. Easy. Okay.
chris_1_09-04-2024_193949: Yeah, Jesse, I mean, how can she answer this question? I've, if somebody asked us that, what would you like,
we've been doing this for
Dr. Jesse Reimink: don't, that, that doesn't mean
that I have to have an answer to my own questions. I don't think that's right. No, no. No [00:25:30] way.
Dr. Rachel Phillips: You're just the
Dr. Jesse Reimink: they don't get, they don't get turned around. I don't think that's the way it works.
chris_1_09-04-2024_193949: Oh, they can get turned around.
Dr. Jesse Reimink: Oh, okay.
Dr. Rachel Phillips: Um,
Dr. Jesse Reimink: Dang it.
Dr. Rachel Phillips: yeah, so I think I'd have to say, based on not only the preparation and making of the video, but also how the, outcome turned out. I think my favorite is my video about purple earth, or
when earth was purple. And I, yeah, I talked with Jesse about this, but essentially early on on my channel, I was very like, [00:26:00] I wanted to title my videos, very technical titles so that people would know that they're getting into kind of very deep, college level lecture in some cases.
And I didn't want to be didn't want to get very poppy and broad with my title and have people click in and be like, oh, gross, it's a lecture and comment mean things and then leave, um, I didn't want to mislead people. And so I wanted to kind of make the titles and thumbnails as technical as the talk.
just to make sure they knew what they were getting into, but [00:26:30] then you know, I received a lot of comments from people saying they liked the lecture format and the deep dives. As once I got better with it. using less jargon and better at speaking and keeping it interesting storytelling type things.
And so as I got better at presenting, I was like, well, I should try and, appeal to broader audiences because even the ones that aren't students seem to enjoy this lecture content as long as it's engaging lectures. And so I decided to take some of my old content that I had made and When I was doing very technical titles and [00:27:00] stuff and kind of revamp it and remarket it as something different and make the video a little bit more poppy in the title and the thumbnail.
And
so the purple earth video is about, how on early earth before modern photosynthesizers, like plants, green plants had evolved, there were photosynthesizing microbes that actually had purple pigments instead of green chlorophyll pigments.
And that earth might have had more of a purple hue if these were very widespread.
I had made a video about that same topic, essentially, [00:27:30] just less focused. called like early photosynthesizers or like evolution of photosynthesis, years ago. And that got maybe like 4, 000 views, I think. And then this Purple Earth video with the When Earth Was Purple title got 100, 000.
So I was like, okay, so this makes a difference. And none of the commenters were mad that it was a lecture.
So I kind of, that was one of my like realization moments of people are interested in these topics as long as you, keep the Lecture or video, whatever, [00:28:00] interesting, you know, as long as you keep it engaging.
And so that was 1 of my aha moments of just. How I can make my videos reach broader audiences and more
people and get more people interested as long as I, you know, keep them interested. So yeah, I, really liked that one because it helped me shift my channel to where it is now, which is, I think, reaching more people.
And it really wasn't until I tested that out that, that I knew I could do that.
Dr. Jesse Reimink: That's really
chris_1_09-04-2024_193949: So Rachel, if you could stick around after the podcast and [00:28:30] have a chat with Jesse about how to name episodes, that would be really helpful because he's, we argue about this all the time and he's just not very good at it.
Dr. Jesse Reimink: Yeah. Well, Chris,
chris_1_09-04-2024_193949: that'd be amazing.
Dr. Jesse Reimink: That's true. I, I need a lot of help on, on episode
Dr. Rachel Phillips: I have to say, well, I just want to say I have. I told Jesse this, but I will go back to my old videos. I used to think when I was making them that I was a relatively good speaker, and now we go back and cringe.
and, you know, I thought it was okay at teaching, you know, my [00:29:00] students that, uh, they enjoyed it, but I, I go back now and I look back at the very old ones and I just cringe so hard.
And, uh, I've gotten way better and I've gotten way better at like using less jargon and using better analogies. But I have to say, after listening to y'all's podcast, I'm like, I need some of your analogies, Chris, because they're so good. You come up with the best, most Self explanatory things to very, very hard concepts.
And I'm like, I should [00:29:30] have known that before I did the video on this, you know,
Dr. Jesse Reimink: it's all Chris. I Chris get Chris. Hold on. Hold on. Get ready for a compliment. It is all Chris Chris is the analogy master. I mean, even if I have a good analogy, usually he fed that to me before the, before the episode.
Dr. Rachel Phillips: just steal them. Yeah. I'm
going to
steal
them.
chris_1_09-04-2024_193949: all the time. That's what I do. I mean, that's what every really good educator does is we just rip off stuff. We have an ability to see what's good and then we just [00:30:00] take it and make it our own. And there's nothing wrong with that. But I'll say, you know, Rachel, to your point too, like when you do something like what you've done for four years, and then you look back on this, this is the best professional development you could ever do.
Right? I mean, Jesse and I feel that way about doing our
podcast. I shudder to think about. What I didn't know five years ago compared to where I'm at now. and it's changed me as an educator as well. I mean, it's, I have to curate [00:30:30] so much more about like, what do I want to say? Because I have, I can't talk forever, you know, even though I want
Dr. Jesse Reimink: Well, just try them. You can try. I, I, I, think Rich, I want to hear your thoughts on that too, but I want to hear your thoughts on another thing as well that you just touched on is we've gone back to Chris and I to some of our old episodes, and they are unlistenable Unlistenable, like they're so cringey.
I mean, we actually rerecorded a couple old ones because we're just like, this is [00:31:00] terrible. . Like, we were not doing a good job at that. So I wanna know
what Chris mentioned, like where is this professional development kind of taken or taking you, but also what is the hardest thing that. Or what's the most difficult thing that you've learned?
Or what's the hardest
in, you know, in the four years? Cause for me, and Chris, I don't know what yours is, but mine is probably just being comfortable with the record button on, like there's something about that. That is, I've always felt like I'm okay in front of a classroom when there's like an, an [00:31:30] exchange between people, but you know, this, like comfort level with being.
On and having a really clear line of, of speaking, like ideas get cluttered in my head and then they kind of get jumbled as on their way out. And this still happens all the time when I'm going back and editing. I'm like, Oh, Jesse, you idiot. You just really rambled through that. but that like clear line of logic in your head to your mouth.
That's something that I really. Still to this day, sort of struggle with a little bit. So I'm curious actually for both of you, what, what's been
the hardest thing.
chris_1_09-04-2024_193949: we both [00:32:00] forgot the question because you
really, really got
rambly there. I mean, it's case in point of
I
fell asleep there for a second. Oh, my gosh. Holy cow.
Dr. Jesse Reimink: Thank you, Rachel. Thanks for sticking up for me. Chris is
so mean
chris_1_09-04-2024_193949: All right. Mm hmm. Mm hmm.
Dr. Rachel Phillips: I'll start and my, so I'll start with just the professional development side of things. Yes, completely. I, again, was under [00:32:30] the impression that I was like pretty okay at this before starting and, have realized through doing it that I definitely wasn't. And
well, I mean, I guess, okay. Depending on what my goals were, but as a communicator, I am now a million percent better, and still, have a long way to go, and I, it's just been completely transformative in terms of how I speak and how I think about speaking now, even, I thought it would just kind of be [00:33:00] YouTube would be separate from the talks that I give at, like, conferences and things, but now from what I've done on YouTube, I now even prepare differently for talks that I give to, like, live audiences and students and, and colleagues at conferences and, and stuff like that.
And I never thought that I would overlap, but the way that I think about. Storytelling and keeping people engaged and how I represent my data and the jargon that I use has just completely changed [00:33:30] because largely because of my audience telling me, I don't understand blank.
Can you explain it again? And every video that that happens, I'm like, God, I should have explained it this way or with this verbiage, because that is, way that I did it is too technical or whatever it might be.
And so. It's really taught me, little by little, all these ways that, you know, I could just become better at communicating in general.
and I've even gotten better at, like, not even just speaking, but like, communicating with students one on one or with anybody one [00:34:00] on one. So it's really just transformed me completely, and I, that's something I did not expect.
Getting into this, I just thought, oh, like, outreach and learning, But yeah, it's been really great for me, not only learning these things, but learning how to communicate. So that has been amazing. And I think has given me a lot of, opportunities that I don't think I would have otherwise gotten, you know, like my current postdoc position.
I don't think I would have gotten it had I not had this huge portfolio of my work [00:34:30] online. so that's been amazing. But, the hardest thing, uh, Oh gosh, there's so many. I think people, everybody wants to communicate, their science. it's the logistics that kind of present this barrier.
And I think people think, yeah, you know, you could go post videos and stuff, were podcasts, but they, they underestimate Everything that goes into that, and I think
for me, it's that everything. the audio adjusting, it's the editing, it's the [00:35:00] preparation, it's everything that you are not trained as, that you have to become an expert in.
That, to me, has been the hardest, but,
yeah, sorry, I'm going.
Dr. Jesse Reimink: No, that,
I think those are,
chris_1_09-04-2024_193949: a very valid point.
Uh, yeah,
Dr. Jesse Reimink: absolutely.
And you bring up an interesting point. I'll have to consider point about getting better at talks and especially interacting with students one on one. That's something I'll have to think about that. I'm sure I've gotten better at that because of, of doing the podcast.
I mean, I'm teaching Chris stuff [00:35:30] every week, so I must be getting better. But, Um,
chris_1_09-04-2024_193949: Yeah.
Dr. Jesse Reimink: so
chris_1_09-04-2024_193949: Oh, you're such a sage, Jesse.
Oh my gosh. Yes. yeah.
that's right. Just to ask you, Rachel, one, one thing, and then I want to get in and talk Geology. So I want to move into talking about your PhD research and what you did and why you chose that direction. But before I do that, your channel, you use like really good graphics and diagrams
and things like that. How, How's that done?
Dr. Rachel Phillips: So, [00:36:00] it depends on which graphics. I do a variety of methods. so, what I normally do is, most of the time, I will try and take Actual figures from from papers that I'm trying to summarize or simplify in a video and I will, you know, try and cite everybody, but I will normally use figures or modify figures in some way so that I can kind of walk through.
The actual data, if I'm representing data, sometimes if it's [00:36:30] just me talking about the intro or the conclusions, I'll just put imagery up there of kind of like what I'm whether it be a dinosaur or something, but I often run into the case where, and I'm sure you guys have run into this with your app and everything, where there's imagery that.
I want to say a very specific thing and get a very specific thing across, and I need something that's just not out there, and
I will go and try and make my own, and I'm very, very low tech, so the only things that I use, I use Canva a lot. [00:37:00] which is the kind of graphic design, well, not really soft, but just website.
and so it has a lot of, you know, little design templates you can use and things you can put together to make a diagram of some sorts. And so I use that a lot to make my own diagrams to explain concepts. And then I just use good old fashioned PowerPoint
a lot. I've gotten really
proficient with it.
Dr. Jesse Reimink: Yeah. Yeah. I'll
say. Yeah. I, I, it's amazing that you've made a lot of that stuff with, even Canva. Canva is sophisticated, more sophisticated, but still difficult to make [00:37:30] the imagery that you're
Dr. Rachel Phillips: Well, the key to good graphics, at least diagrams, to show concepts, in my experience, is simplicity, so I just
make
chris_1_09-04-2024_193949: I know
Dr. Rachel Phillips: simple things.
chris_1_09-04-2024_193949: that's true. But Jesse and I have thought a lot about this and we've, had a lot of conversations about, think about the possibilities of having somebody with an understanding of geoscience and then just can kill it in
graphic design. It would be what? Amazing.
Dr. Rachel Phillips: It's always been my number one, [00:38:00] like, wish list of things. If I could, like, fund a person to come help me with any aspect, it would be graphics. Because I hate also having to use and rely on, like, fair use when I use imagery and stuff that isn't mine. But it's, I can't, I don't have the capacity or skill to make anything.
That is designed by me. And so, you know, I just rely on the transformative aspect a lot of the times, and I would love to just have a graphic design.
Dr. Jesse Reimink: Yeah. Totally. I [00:38:30] mean, we, we went through an exercise of, of, I mean, we've, we work with graphic designers and, and, you know, went through an exercise of finding somebody who's a geologist who brings
that as well. Um, and so but it's a work in progress, you know, like working through this stuff and, you know, that kind of talent gotta have some revenue to support that.
Right. And so,
uh, that it'd be great to be at a point where we could. You can, you know, do that a lot. But, um, I think we're all kind of as geologists, we're also fairly visual. Like we, we need to have the visuals. So we are kind of visual by [00:39:00] default, but then there's some people who are like incredibly talented visualists as long as, as well as geologists.
Um,
chris_1_09-04-2024_193949: Okay. Rachel. No, that's fine. That's fine. Yeah. No, Rachel. So can you tell us about your PhD research? let's talk geology for a little bit.
Dr. Rachel Phillips: Okay. So, yeah, for my PhD work, I did, I studied paleo oceanography. So essentially ancient ocean chemistry, at least in my case. And, essentially the way that I normally explain this is. The way we [00:39:30] study Earth's past, like before humans were around to take climatic and environmental measurements, is by using the things that were around taking those measurements for us, aka rocks.
And so I did lab based research where I essentially mixed chemicals together to see how certain specific rocks form, so that when we found those rocks in the rock record, we knew what conditions they represented. In terms of ocean chemistry and whatnot. And so my specific project was [00:40:00] focused on studying molybdenum signatures and how molybdenum signatures formed.
So, in other words, I studied how molybdenum containing rocks form and how, the molybdenum speciation or type of molybdenum that got preserved, how it got preserved under different chemical conditions. So different pH, different oxygen concentrations. And then essentially we use that to then take that and say, okay, if we find this molybdenum species or compound in a rock from, this kind of rock, [00:40:30] then it was probably Relatively low in oxygen concentration or relatively acidic.
And so that was what my work was, was based
Dr. Jesse Reimink: So what kind
chris_1_09-04-2024_193949: Were you able to do anything with temperature or not
Dr. Rachel Phillips: I didn't do anything with temperature that focused on temperature. I focused mainly on oxygen content, pH iron content and sulfur content.
Dr. Jesse Reimink: can you give us a kind of a workflow? Like what is, what did your PhD workflow look like? Were you collecting samples, bringing them back to the lab? What was the [00:41:00] sort of balance there?
Dr. Rachel Phillips: Yeah, so I did for my specific dissertation work, it was fully lab based. There
was a point in time where I wanted to do field samples and take them back to the lab and analyze them. Um, which I did do for one project, but not, it wasn't in my dissertation, but, um, for my dissertation work, it was fully just me synthesizing molybdenum compounds in labs.
So I would get up, go to lab, well, a lot of it was just me. Preparation. So designing the experiments, and that was for the [00:41:30] first bit, a lot of what it was, my whole first chapter of my dissertation is a review paper, not even data containing because, well, I got to grad school and a pandemic happened.
So we got kicked out of the lab and my advisor was like, read a bunch of papers and write a review. And I was like, sure.
So I did that and, um, . Then I got back to lab and you know, by then I had a lot of time to prepare. you know, my plan for experiments and I proposed my idea and my committee said, yes.
And so I went ahead and did [00:42:00] series of experiments every month to 2 months. Some of them ran longer, but it was just, analyzing them every day.
Dr. Jesse Reimink: So you were generating, sorry, you were, you were doing an experimental calibration. So you, you had compiled a bunch of stuff in your first chapter, of like molybdenum speciation, molybdenum measurements from real rocks. And then you were kind of experimentally calibrating those measurements in the lab for the latter chapters.
Dr. Rachel Phillips: yeah, essentially from the lit review that I had done for the first chapter, I knew what the major questions were in the field and what the [00:42:30] major debates were in terms of which molybdenum signatures were a little bit more ambiguous. And so I then. designed experiments to look into those specific questions that we still didn't know.
yeah, that was the rest of, you know, the two, three years that I was there, it was just in the lab, well, for like two years. And then writing was the
Dr. Jesse Reimink: Yeah, yeah, yeah. Okay. I mean, it's amazing. I could go back to this. It's amazing that you, you know, maintain this YouTube channel while doing this and you're doing graduate school all during COVID. I mean, that, that's [00:43:00] a very, that's a very efficient graduate school and very resilient. Do you feel, this is an odd question and we can cut this if you want, But do you feel that your sports background, Has helped you a lot with,
Dr. Rachel Phillips: an odd question. Absolutely it
has 100%. That is what gave me. My work ethic. I, I
know it. It's my gymnastics coach, the Russian and French people yelling at me in the background. Yes, that is it.
Dr. Jesse Reimink: Yeah. Yeah. I, I'd imagine, I mean, for me, [00:43:30] I played small college basketball during college and I was always a much better student during the season than out of the season, like the structure. And I always had to be just, you had to be more structured in your life when you were sort of doing this.
And I found that again in graduate school. I did. I played some basketball. Um, I would say semi, semi, semi, semi professionally in graduate school for a couple of years. And it was the same thing. I was just a much more productive person because I had to be, you know, like you had more structure to your day and graduate school.
You [00:44:00] can be, you have unlimited amount of unstructured time that
you just have to decide what to do with. So adding that little
bit of structure really helped me a lot.
Dr. Rachel Phillips: Yeah.
I had to be really. Mindful and determined and organized to make my I mean, all grad students have to. And that was one thing for me. I had an advisor that I had an undergraduate research advisor that was very strict on timelines.
And then I had a graduate advisor that was very lenient because
she's, she always told me, well, you're so driven.
And I'm like, no, I [00:44:30] need you to give me a deadline.
And
if you don't, I will not send anything to you. And so.
I had to tell her or ask her to give me deadline because I just, and so sometimes she was, she was too nice and she just wouldn't. And so I was like, okay, I got to make myself do
this. So I really had to be hard on myself.
But yeah, I think, I think absolutely my athletics background was one of the
major reasons that I could,
chris_1_09-04-2024_193949: do you plan to like, are you going to continue this line of research or are you going in different [00:45:00] directions or do you just have more questions than when you first started?
is
Dr. Rachel Phillips: I am now doing a postdoc that's different research. I'm still finishing up, some of those. last papers and stuff from the molybdenum work and then other internship work that I did essentially the same thing with the molybdenum, but with thallium instead.
we're finishing up publishing those in the next year or 2.
I just got revisions back today on my
last dissertation molybdenum paper.
So,
um. [00:45:30] but good.
Dr. Jesse Reimink: Okay. Well, that's
Dr. Rachel Phillips: positive. just just lots of
chris_1_09-04-2024_193949: sore topic with Jesse.
Dr. Jesse Reimink: Yeah. Chris
Dr. Rachel Phillips: Oh,
Dr. Jesse Reimink: and I, uh,
Dr. Rachel Phillips: thing about academia is
Dr. Jesse Reimink: oh,
Dr. Rachel Phillips: is revising.
Dr. Jesse Reimink: I, I, one of my favorite things to do is to rant to Chris when I get a paper rejected.
chris_1_09-04-2024_193949: It's
Dr. Jesse Reimink: And then, And then, like six months later, he'd be like, so what about that paper? And I'm like, ah, it's still not accepted anywhere. It's
in the second round of reviews or some cranky thing about it.
Yeah.
Dr. Rachel Phillips: I'm telling you,
Dr. Jesse Reimink: so frustrating.
Dr. Rachel Phillips: I love being like 10th author, [00:46:00] non corresponding author. Like then
you're
Dr. Jesse Reimink: just the best.
Dr. Rachel Phillips: but corresponding off. Oh my,
it's, it's,
it's the worst, but,
and reviewers are just so blunt because they're. And you're like, you could
have said
chris_1_09-04-2024_193949: See, does that seem, does that seem right to you? We've Jesse and I've talked about this. Does it seem right that they can be that like, I don't know, something about that doesn't hit me right.
Dr. Rachel Phillips: Well,
Dr. Jesse Reimink: have you, have you, uh, started reviewing papers yet?
Dr. Rachel Phillips: yeah. And I struggle with that [00:46:30] too. I'm like, do I reveal my identity or not? I'm always very not, like, I don't know. I'm scared to be mean. So I'm typically very nice anyway, but I never know what to do. I, I don't know whether I like it or not when people do reveal their identity, because I do have one particular reviewer that seems to always get my papers, and he's always told me who he was, but he's never less blunt.
chris_1_09-04-2024_193949: Yeah.
Dr. Jesse Reimink: This is the classic thing, and my, my PhD supervisor gave me very good advice that I, I try and mostly follow, which was he, he [00:47:00] says he always signs his name because he feels like you have to be internally consistent. If you, if you do it once, you should always do it twice. And if you're either anonymous once you should always be anonymous or if you're signed your name once you should always sign your name, but he feels like it's a good internal check on him so that he's so that he's more thorough and more careful in his
review and doesn't just kind of either give unwarranted compliments or give unwarranted critiques because he signed his name to it so he spends a lot more time on his reviews, which makes a lot of sense.
But I have not always followed [00:47:30] that advice, especially earlier on, when I'm reviewing somebody senior, very senior to me's work and I, I know I'm going to be a little critical about it.
Um,
you know, in a nice way, I still like, I'm really hesitant to, anyway. Yeah.
So,
Dr. Rachel Phillips: I also sometimes do the same thing where I'm like, well, I don't want to reveal my identity because
I don't know if I'm if I'm saying all the right thing. Like,
I don't know that much about this topic.
So I don't know. I still have very much imposter syndrome when I [00:48:00] review. But
Dr. Jesse Reimink: It doesn't go away. I say that definitely doesn't go away. okay. I want to hear about the postdoc research now. So what, um, you know, what led you to this and, and what are you finding? I'm so interested in this topic. This is just so cool.
Dr. Rachel Phillips: Oh, yeah. Yeah. I didn't even finish the previous question about if I was going to continue, but yeah, I have some papers. But, um, other than that, I like now the direction I'm going in now with the postdoc research. So I think I'll probably do that rather than go back to, [00:48:30] The paleo oceanography, geochemistry work that I was doing for my PhD, just because I think it's more impactful.
and so, well, now I'll just go ahead and answer the next question, which is what is that?
I, for my postdoc, I'm doing, well, it's an NSF fellowship. That is the solicitation for the fellowship is. NSF STEM education, something fellowship, postdoctoral fellowship, I think. And when I submitted a proposal, I was like, well, I'm interested in geoscience education, have no, background or experience other than my channel that I've done [00:49:00] throughout grad school, but it's not been part of my research.
So I really wasn't all that confident about getting it. but I think, again, like I said earlier, I think having that portfolio out there of my kind of commitment to geoscience communication really helped me get that. And so I did get it and I was like,
okay,
well.
Dr. Jesse Reimink: NSF postdoctoral fellowship. That's great.
Dr. Rachel Phillips: Yeah, Yeah, thank you. yeah, I ended up getting that and taking it to University of South Carolina, which is where I'm at now, and working with
Dr.
[00:49:30] Katherine
Dr. Jesse Reimink: start just for the, for the listener who doesn't know these are, you wrote You can do two kinds of postdocs. You can go work for somebody who has money to support a postdoc, or you can write your own thing, which you've done, which is the much harder route. You raised your own money and then you can take it wherever you want, basically.
Like you get it funded and then you
Dr. Rachel Phillips: Um,
so,
Dr. Jesse Reimink: to go to.
Dr. Rachel Phillips: for mine, they required me to submit the proposal on top of an explanation of where I was
going to carry out the research and [00:50:00] with whom
and why I chose it. That university and that person and have a very good reason to, back that up. So I did a lot of research beforehand, reaching out to different people.
The first two professors I reached out to were actually retiring, but they both recommended this person to me, which is Catherine Riker at University of South Carolina. So I was like, well, That seems like people think she's the person to go with. So I reached out to her and she helped me finish up, letters other components.
There's so many components [00:50:30] to an NSF proposal,
but we finished that up. Yeah. So. She had agreed before, we even submitted it and then, you know, six months later, whenever they get back to you and they're like, Hey, you got it. You're like, Oh, okay, cool.
So,
um, yeah.
Dr. Jesse Reimink: cool. Yeah. It's that kind
Dr. Rachel Phillips: Oh, and I had just accepted something else.
That was like a a 25, 000 grant for like a dissertation fellowship that I had to give back
because I accepted this other thing, which required me to [00:51:00] graduate sooner. So they were like, nah, yeah, no, you have to
give that back. So
Dr. Jesse Reimink: bummer. That always hurts.
Dr. Rachel Phillips: yeah. But I'm glad that I went the route that I did.
So, I am here in South Carolina now with, Catherine Riker, and I am now working on, geoeducation research is her field, technically. my specific project is a little bit more broad. A combination of geoeducation and geocommunication research. So what I'm specifically trying to figure out is what are the major misconceptions of [00:51:30] geoscience among students and the general public, and how can we transform those to increase geoscience enrollment and engagement in the field?
So to do this, it's essentially project is a survey based project. I'll send out surveys asking questions, you know, Trying to identify misperceptions of geoscience,
or just perceptions of geoscience in general, and get an idea of all differences in age groups, thinking one thing versus the other, or,
you know, maybe [00:52:00] gender stereotypes, and so all of these things to kind of just identify what's out there and then use that to kind of see what has deterred students from entering the field, and which ones of those have, you know, been encourage students to enter the field and then try and design better outreach techniques and methods for us in the future to use to more effectively encourage students to enter the field.
Dr. Jesse Reimink: Oh,
chris_1_09-04-2024_193949: Are, are
you able to talk about any of what you've found?
Dr. Rachel Phillips: Yeah, so far, um, I have [00:52:30] found part of the, the, the questions you sent me that I ran out of time to prepare for. So this is just, this might get a little rambling, but,
um, so far, I've seen a lot of misperceptions around geology is well, the most common ones I see through like comments too on YouTube and one of the reasons I wanted to actually do this project is because I see, Oh, geology is just rocks or oil and gas or whatever.
And people come to my channel and they're like, I didn't know it [00:53:00] also was like, know, geobiology or geochemistry, they don't realize that there are other avenues
to geology and, and aspects of it. so that's a big one is just not understanding the full scope of geology.
And then, another major misperception I see is people, especially younger student aged people thinking that. Geology is bad for the environment or
has somehow caused climate change, which, you know, obviously, in part has, but it's also part of the solution, which I think [00:53:30] they are not. They're missing that part.
and so don't put together that geo means earth. They kind of just have again, it goes back to that perception of geology, meaning either just rocks or just, you know. oil, gas, or fossil fuels, whatever. And so they they have this idea that it's either bad or boring or whatever, and that seems to have really influence especially younger generations.
then I also saw some, I'm just picking, I think the, results that I've seen that I think are the most interesting. [00:54:00] Another
very interesting finding that I think came from some of the early surveys is I asked people, I kind of threw this in there last minute too, I asked people to define This was one of the only questions on there that was like, fill in the blank, like they could choose the wording, and I said define geology in three words, and then I said to define in the next question, define geoscience in three words, no context, and that's it.
Over, I think it was like 80% of the people or more put something related to rocks when it came to defining geology. [00:54:30] And 50% of the people, or like 60, put something related to earth and had no mention of rocks when it came to geoscience. So people
think
geoscience is the, is the science of earth, and geology is the study of rocks when there's the same thing
because geo means, and, and so that to me, I was like.
I mean, it validates a lot of the department name changes that we're seeing. People go from Geological Sciences to Earth Sciences or Earth and Environmental Sciences. but it really is crazy to me that people [00:55:00] have this old traditional view of geology that is, I think, you know, exacerbating this enrollment decline that we're seeing.
and then the very last thing. That I'll mention is, I saw a lot of people in my third set of surveys where I asked more about what kinds of outreach would actually get you interested, stuff like that. and how you were, people were initially exposed to geoscience and whether that increased their interest or decreased or didn't change anything.
I saw a lot of hints at. A [00:55:30] need for more geoscience in the media and not just geoscience in media, whether it be books, magazines, TV, like traditional things, or, social media, and, Whatever else there is in terms of media. but all of these things, it seems people want not just more geoscience representation, or not want, but that would help, get more young people interested, but also, More, diverse representation of like diverse role models and not just, you know, your typical older, you [00:56:00] know, white
Dr. Jesse Reimink: People who look like Chris. I mean, let's be honest about it. People who look like Chris and
me.
chris_1_09-04-2024_193949: I knew it. Yeah, I do.
Dr. Rachel Phillips: with a raw camera, you know, well, and also people in different settings in
the lab
and yeah, so,
chris_1_09-04-2024_193949: it's.
true though.
Dr. Jesse Reimink: Yeah.
Dr. Rachel Phillips: so that was the biggest things is like more media exposure and, and, more accurate, wide, diverse, Types of media exposure of geoscientists. And then, the just perceptions part, but yeah,
Dr. Jesse Reimink: I think that, I mean, a couple of those that stand out to me, [00:56:30] I mean, first of all, these are so interesting and I'll be really curious. right. So to hear how, I mean, maybe near the end, how long is your postdoc for? How long is this, this project,
Dr. Rachel Phillips: uh, two years. And I have till the end. I just finished, I started in January. So I
have till
Dr. Jesse Reimink: So you got.
Dr. Rachel Phillips: Yeah.
Dr. Jesse Reimink: great. Okay, so
chris_1_09-04-2024_193949: okay,
Year and a half.
Dr. Jesse Reimink: I'll be very interested to hear, you know, how this progresses over the next, several years. but I think one thing that stood out, we had Steph Morzak on, who is a mining geologist, and has [00:57:00] worked in a variety of mining things. But her opinion on the, second one you mentioned, the young, and I see this all the time, the young students who have this perception that geology equals bad, geology equals mining, geology equals oil and gas.
And. it's again, it's, it's like not wrong, but it's not right either. Like, and it's not the way you said it is perfect. It's part of the solution. the solution resides in geoscience fundamentally here. and, and I think that that's missed. And so I'll be interested to hear sort of what solutions there are to that.
[00:57:30] And the, the other one that I've. I think the representation aspect is a really such an important one. And there's so many people from both diversity of science and diversity of backgrounds that are out there doing really, really cool stuff. And there's so many people who go off and do cool stuff, but actually had like sort of our home in geoscience or geology, they're like geologists by training, and then they go off and, I mean, the head of DARPA, she's amazing, and she's a geologist by training, like it's an incredible career path.[00:58:00]
That geology sets you up for even if you don't go into geoscience, Yeah, just the skill set you develop in geoscience undergrad program or graduate program is just applicable to so many different fields. So, I, Yeah,
Dr. Rachel Phillips: Yeah, and I,
Dr. Jesse Reimink: to hear your results so far and I'll be excited to see where it goes.
Dr. Rachel Phillips: yeah, they definitely align with a lot of the things I've seen through YouTube comments as well. I remember I always, whenever people, like I do like update videos and stuff that aren't necessarily lectures, I'll sometimes like post pictures of like [00:58:30] conference I went to or a thing I went to, um, to analyze samples or, um, me working in the lab because I finished a set of experiments or whatever.
and I remember throughout grad school, obviously, everything I was doing was in the lab and whenever I'd like, put up pictures of me doing my samples in the lab or put up a video or whatever people were like. Aren't you a geologist? why are you in the
lab?
And I'm like,
that's geology
Dr. Jesse Reimink: yeah, yeah, totally.
Yeah. I
mean,
Dr. Rachel Phillips: don't realize it
Dr. Jesse Reimink: it's [00:59:00] so interesting. I mean, so how, how, where are you taking this, your YouTube channel, I guess, and is this research that you're doing like feeding back directly into what you're plans are for the future with the channel?
Dr. Rachel Phillips: Yeah. I, immediately after I started getting survey results, I was like, Oh, I should do this. Like, you know, I, I
started seeing certain things that I was Oh, that means I should do this. So yeah, absolutely. I want to, Start implementing things. Actually, one of the biggest things that I noticed was, to, well, [00:59:30] let me, I know we're like going way over time, but I have
a short story, short story.
when I was in grad school, our department hired on an outreach coordinator, something like
that. And she used to be faculty and she moved to doing this position. And she occasionally invited us graduate students to come to high schools with her to talk about
Geology and get students.
So I was really excited about this idea. And I was like, Oh my gosh, we're going to high schools. This isn't in high school or taught in high school, at least in El Paso, Texas. And so I was like, [01:00:00] yes, we need to expose high schoolers to this. This is great. So I would go with her and she would start the presentation, the 45 minute presentation with it.
So here's the major and track options in our
department and some of the fact and I was like wait No, we need to tell them why rocks are cool first.
And so they kind of glaze over Yeah.
and so I I remember thinking, no, we've got to go about this totally differently. And at the [01:00:30] end of whole lecture, she would go into some of the cool research going on in the department.
And I'm like, we need to start with that. Or,
like, start with what geology is, why it's cool. I remember, that was kind of like a just aha moment in, in my mind of like, okay, so it's not just that we need to hire these people and pay them to go do this, but we also need to do it right. And. I, didn't do anything at that point, but now that I'm in this field and I'm seeing the results from the surveys and [01:01:00] what, high school aged people might've benefited from knowing and being exposed to at that time, I'm realizing that the main thing that we need to focus on is getting them, just interested in the topic to begin with.
We don't need to start off with, you know, career options or whatever, right? But so that's recruitment side, in terms of retaining students, retention side of things, career options is a really, really important thing. And so 1 of the things that I've learned in my survey [01:01:30] is. departments don't do a great job of telling
students what they can do with their degree.
And
so I have, I have now designed an idea for, for the future of my channel to do kind of, a series I'm working on interviews for the, for the near future, which I'll talk about in a second, but I want to do, and they're more so with academics going over research projects, but I want to do I've done a series of videos interviewing people that aren't just academics that are, you know, working in every sector of geoscience [01:02:00] and industry and consulting and whatever, talk about these different.
well, what they're doing just first again, starting off with interest and concepts and things that get people in the door and then finishing off with, okay, well, how did you get into your current position? What is your day to day? And how can somebody that might be interested in this get in and do that?
And so, you know, That is something that I know on my channel would be really impactful because I do have students that watch me. They're already in the major and they need to know what to do [01:02:30] with it. And
I've made like a geoscience career video in the past because people wanted it, but I am not the person to talk about it because I am in academics.
You know,
I'm not the person doing the thing. So I really hope to do that eventually. Um, that's the That's definitely in my future plans, and that's definitely inspired by the survey results and things I've noticed. And then in the more near future, I'm doing, a GSA Science Communication Fellowship.
This year. and I, for that, I'm [01:03:00] going to be kind of taking over their channel as well as kind of posting videos in tandem of on boat channels that, overlap a bit to promote both, but also, to begin with in the next month or so, it's going to be mainly interviews with, um, scientists presenting at GSA and
talking about their projects and promoting the conference and all of that.
but I'm really excited for that because, again, it kind of brings me into this interview. world and, and gives me some experience with that so that I can do things like [01:03:30] future interviews about careers and, future interviews with people like you about oldest rocks. So that's what I'm really excited about is just transitioning into more interviews.
Of course, I don't want to replace my, classic lectures, but
Dr. Jesse Reimink: Yeah, right. Of course. No, you can't, you can't stray too far from home base, but that's really cool about the GSA fellowship. So it'll be an ongoing thing over the next year. Is it you said a
year? I'll
show. Okay. That's great.
Dr. Rachel Phillips: And we'll see after that.
Dr. Jesse Reimink: Here it goes. That's really cool. I mean, and I think that is something, first of all, there's no [01:04:00] money in oldest rocks research.
So don't go into that for, for career choice people. Uh, but I it's something, even our department at Penn state, you know, we have a massive alumni network of very successful geoscientists that went out in the industry. And we don't use them, frankly. Like, we, we just don't expose our students to really the non academic alumni.
We're pretty good about exposing people to the academic path because we're all academics. But, we're not that great at integrating, the alumni. And my experience is that the alumni who are out in [01:04:30] industry, And I've gone on to like amazing careers. They're really passionate about giving back and interacting with students.
We're just not really using it very well. So I think, you know, your sort of goals there are massively aligned with a lot of people out there who are on the, the fading edge of a career maybe, and they want to give back and they've had an amazing path because of geoscience and they'd love to come on your channel.
I bet you'd get a massive
amount of people who want to do that. So, Yeah. Very cool way.
chris_1_09-04-2024_193949: It's such a, this is so true. I [01:05:00] come across this all the time because parents of my high school students want to meet with me and their kid wants to go into geoscience and, and they, they're sometimes I get the feeling like they're almost pissed off. Like,
what have you done You know, what is,
what, what are they
going to do with that?
You know, but seriously, I don't do a good job of it myself. I don't do a all right. So you're turned on to the field of geoscience, but what are you going to do?
Um, yeah, we, I just think that we pretty much do [01:05:30] a horrible job of What's the next step?
Dr. Rachel Phillips: Yeah. Yeah. Actually on that, on that point, Chris, I, it's so funny. I used to think I want to reach the younger people. I want to reach the students, the potential students, to inspire them to go into geoscience. And that's it. And I remember I always saw like, oh, In my analytics, Oh, I'm reaching pretty good spread of age groups up all the way to 65 plus.
And I was initially like, like, I wish it was younger, or younger [01:06:00] dominant. Um, but then I realized through comments, the importance of having the older audience in there, because I got comments from parents and grandparents that were like, Oh, Man, if I had known about this, I might have become a geoscientist, and now I want to tell my granddaughter or my
daughter about your channel and about what you can do with this.
And I realized how important it is that we talk to the parents and talk to the grandparents. And that's not just like something there's data that shows that, you know, [01:06:30] especially minority groups, especially Hispanic groups are very, Familial, like influenced, but in terms of like what they do for a job.
And so talking to the parents and talking to the grandparents is really, really important for kids' decisions in terms of majoring.
And so I think, it's definitely changed my perspective on, reaching older audiences. And now I'm really grateful for, for my parent and grandparent audience because
I, I,
we
Dr. Jesse Reimink: Yeah, totally. Yeah, that's a really great point. I hadn't ever thought [01:07:00] about that of sort of feedback down from grandparents and parents, but it's, it's totally true. Like everybody knows what a lawyer does and that you can make a bunch of money. Nobody knows what a geologist, that you can go have a six figure, salary as a geologist, right?
Like, that's not unless you know somebody, um, who did It you don't know. And I think, you know, one thing that on the younger thing, that's something that Chris has, has had a massive influence on of geologists because we got exposed to a very passionate person about geology in high
school, in [01:07:30] early high school, which is
incredibly rare in most places, especially in the state of Michigan where there's actually very little geoscience industry whatsoever.
So, that early exposure is really important, but like, it's a good, it's a really interesting point you just made that, it doesn't hurt to influence the parents and the grandparents as well. That's really, I hadn't thought about that before. That's a great way to put it. So, yeah, that's totally cool.
Well, we are, I mean, we're running long in the tooth, Rachel. I will ask maybe one more question, but I want to I'll also a commitment to come back on maybe once this [01:08:00] research a little further along, we can talk about it again, because I think there's, there's so you
have such an interesting take on stuff and collecting really interesting data on geoscience misconceptions or something.
So as long as you're willing to do that and come back on again, that'd be well, we could, we could end now as we're
running long. Yeah. right.
Is
that you're
right.
chris_1_09-04-2024_193949: We'll
agree to end it then.
Dr. Jesse Reimink: Does that sound right, Chris? Is that okay?
chris_1_09-04-2024_193949: Yeah. That's fine. That's all right.
Dr. Jesse Reimink: Yeah, okay. Alright, well, Rachel, our traditional closing question here is, what is your best day as a geoscientist? [01:08:30]
Dr. Rachel Phillips: You know, I looked at this question and then I was like, I don't know. And then I thought about it for maybe 0. 2 seconds and I was like, no, I do know. And it was definitely the first day that I got a comment that was like from a student that was like, I am majoring in this because of
you. I was like, okay, this is it.
this is that right there. has doubled my impact as a geoscientist. And then, you know, every time that happens now, I'm just so grateful for this, you know, platform that I have and [01:09:00] ability to impact students that I have. And now, it obviously gets me nervous because I'm like, gosh, now it's so much responsibility, but like, I feel really lucky to be in the position that I can inspire students to do this.
But that was definitely that first time was definitely, I think, my best day.
Dr. Jesse Reimink: yeah, I mean,
okay, I have so many questions, that's a very cool
experience. mean, you're following, you have 10 to 100x more followers than people who have ever read my, any of my, uh, My papers or all of my papers I've ever written in [01:09:30] aggregate, right? Like the, the following, it's just an amazing thing.
So how do you handle the, you said pressure, which I think is really an interesting one. How do you not stress yourself out about that? I guess.
Dr. Rachel Phillips: You know, it's really not that bad when I, in just, you know, in my little world, posting my, normal videos that do nothing. average. because I have this community those people that always comment on every
single video and always come back and have done [01:10:00] so since the beginning of the channel,
those people are always the people that I see in the comments and I feel such comfort and like, they're
my little, Geo family.
I'm like, Oh yeah. Okay. If you liked the video, then we're good. Like,
you know, like we're good. to
go. Like, and so I feel a lot of comfort from that. When, when videos go crazy, like I had the dark oxygen one go crazy, like 250, 000 views. That was a lot of comments from people that don't normally watch me. And those make me remember that, those numbers are, are [01:10:30] people and, and, that, you know, there's people that might not like what I'm saying.
And so those videos are great. Cause you're like, Oh, it's doing really well, but also it's like bittersweet. Cause you also see a lot more negativity and,
and
skepticism, which I love skepticism as a scientist, but like when it's negative, it's of rude. It's not great. So I, I'm just.
The people that come back every time and when I see their comments, that's when I feel like really comforted and like, yeah, this is, [01:11:00] this is like my little family. I must keep going.
Dr. Jesse Reimink: Yeah.
Yeah. That's really cool. All right. That's great. I never thought about the comment section as kind of a source of that for, for somebody in your position. That's cool. Well, that's, that's a great day as a geoscientist. I must say
that's a very good answer.
Well, thank
chris_1_09-04-2024_193949: a good answer. I guess we're going to have to let you go
Dr. Jesse Reimink: I know. I
guess we'll let you
go. We can talk about the comments section, you know,
the next time round two,
Dr. Rachel Phillips: Yeah, part two.
Dr. Jesse Reimink: part two, we can, we can dive into all that. That'll be great. Well, thank you, Rachel. This has been [01:11:30] super informative and interesting and your channel is just amazing and you're listening to this, go check it out.
It's at GeoGirl at YouTube and you have a website as well, loads of information, um, and just videos on everything. I mean, you have produced so much amazing content. It's incredible. So, go check it out. And you got a series coming up with, uh, with GSA as well, which will be very exciting to see.
So thanks for joining us. This has been awesome, Rachel. Really
appreciate the time. This has been great. All
Dr. Rachel Phillips: Thank you so
chris_1_09-04-2024_193949: Rachel.
Dr. Rachel Phillips: Thank you for having me. [01:12:00] Hey, that's a wrap. Thanks for listening again. If you want to support us, there are two ways to do that. First of all, you can head over to our website, planetgeocast. com. There's a support us link there. You can also download. Our camp geo mobile app.
Dr. Jesse Reimink: It's the first link in your show notes. And we have a ton of audio book content for sale there. And also a bunch for free, the intro level geoscience course that Chris and I teach with a bunch of images in audio textbook form. You can also find old podcast episodes organized in a more linear fashion.
Chris and I kind of randomly walk [01:12:30] around through geoscience content in this channel, but if you want to find it more organized fashion, it's on the app. You can also send us an email, planetgeocast. gmail. com or follow us on all the social medias at planetgeocast.
