Geology - It is just rocks, right?

This past spring semester I had the opportunity to teach students geology at a local community college. I absolutely love this job and look forward to continuing teaching for the foreseeable future. On the first day of classes, I like to get to know my students, and I will ask them several questions including "why are you taking this class?" This question is a way for me to gauge who is taking geology because they are interested in the topic and who is taking the class because they need a science credit. More often than not, the students are taking the class because they need to fulfill a science credit. As this past semester progressed, I found out from many students that their academic advisors told them to take geology because "it is just rocks." As you can imagine, this statement does not sit well with me for many reasons. Here are three reasons I dislike the previous statement: 1) geology is much more than rocks, 2) it sounds like the advisor is implying geology is easy, 3) it also sounds like the advisor is discounting the importance of geology.

The first point I made is that geology is much more than rocks. It is very important for a geologist to be able to identify rocks and understand their properties such as the porosity, permeability, or their stability. However, what I mean when I say geology is much more than rocks is that although subdisciplines in geology all have to do with rocks in some capacity, there are bigger picture issues. For example, geologists study groundwater and how to avoid contamination so that we can use this water in our houses for everyday life. Another example is geologists understanding the stability of rocks to avoid mass wasting when building homes, highways, or other structures. To take a quote from an upcoming movie titled Justice League, when someone tells you that geology is just rocks, you should respond, "That feels like an oversimplification."

The second point I mentioned is that it sounds like the advisor is implying geology is an easy subject, and therefore the student should take this class for easy credit. Unfortunately, the student often comes into the class with an attitude thinking they don't need to put in the effort and then starts to struggle with concepts from the beginning. So let us just set this straight right now, geology is not easy. Geology often requires someone to not only understand rocks and minerals, but also to understand chemistry, physics, and biology to name a few other major disciplines.

The final point I made is that the advisor is discounting the importance of geology as a discipline. This point was touched on in the first point I mentioned, but I will just list a couple jobs geologists do that I guess people don't understand geologists have a part it:

1. Find oil and gas
2. Find minerals and other ore bodies for creating things such as your phone or cars.
3. Finding fresh water for you to drink
4. Keep rivers and reservoirs contaminate free so you can continue to drink fresh water.
5. Understand soils to plant crops.
6. Understand climate and how it will affect where we live.
7. Understanding soils/rocks/and slopes to help decide where to build structures.
8. Understand how to minimize beach erosion so you can have beach front properties.
9. Understand earthquakes so you can live in earthquake prone areas.
10. Obviously a lot more.

To conclude my post, I will make sure to explain to future students on the first day of classes that this class will not be easy and quickly explain like I did here, the importance of geology as a discipline. I hope that none of my students will drop the class at this point so that I can expand further throughout the semester the wonders of geology.