Letters from the field 3: Yeah.

Dear Future Shazta,

I know that you haven't forgotten this field trip I just got back from. You really ever won't, short of a massive head injury. If that happens though, see if you can selectively forget the following things that I was unable to write about until now ('cause I kinda needed to calm down first):

1) This was the trip where you got a shock as to just how out of the loop you are with your team. After noticing some unusual bookkeeping practices, you started asking some pointed questions and found out that the grant was out of field money. No one had mentioned this to you before. Which means that for Year 1 of a field project, you have 2 weeks worth of field data to work with. Awesome. Especially since you didn't design your field work with this knowledge in mind. Associated with this, try to forget the extra beers and desserts purchased with the grant money, despite the lack of funding. Remember that you are not in the US, and there are different cultural norms at play here.

2) You also may have gotten into a standoff with one of your team members on a random Mexican hillside with competing GPS units, arguing over which way to go to find a pond you were searching for. For what it's worth, you were right (not difficult, since she insisted that you were standing IN the pond already, despite all evidence to the contrary). At any rate, you never did find the f-ing pond because, after the "debate," it was universally agreed upon to be too far away to hike to it while carrying an inflatable boat.

3) Ok, so to be honest, you may just want to completely block out all memories of that one colleague. She manages to get under your skin in ways that defy logic and leave you a frothing mess of resentment in the back seat of the truck (though you finally got to sit in the front seat a couple of times this trip. That's because she wasn't along on those days, having taken the other truck.). Just forget about her frequent use of "Chhh-chh-chhh" to get your attention the same way other people get the attention of their dogs (when they are misbehaving). Also forget about how hilarious she thought it was that a local boy said he couldn't understand your Spanish, and how she kept repeating the story over and over to everyone, despite the fact that you had been speaking English to your non-Spanish-speaking assistant and there is really no wonder that the little boy couldn't understand your "accent." Etc.

Oh well. Not every trip will be perfect. And you have heard from independent sources that your one colleague is fairly universally difficult to work with. Just take a deep breath and appreciate that her contract supposedly ends in one month. That, and learn how to do geochemistry really slowly so that it will fill up your time for a while.

Cheers,

Shazta