David West

Mineralogy was a super useful class, but only if you're really into rocks or are majoring in Geology. Otherwise it would probably be a slog. Lots of looking at rocks, but I learned a ton of useful things that apply to the major. Good class.

I am an ECSC major and really enjoyed taking mineralogy. I would definitely recommend taking the course earlier on as a major but I found it super useful as a foundational course for the major. Prof. West is a great lecturer, the workload is super low, and I felt like I learned a ton. Not much more you can ask for I would definitely recommend this class.

This course was centred around writing 6 ~12 page long labs (including many pics & figures), and then creating a final project using those labs as appendices. It felt very satisfying to hand in this huge final project because it felt manageable, as each of the labs were individually quite difficult to complete but were spaced out reasonably throughout the semester. Definitely a high-work load class, but it does come with a writing class requirement. Outside of these lab write ups, there was no other work required. I really enjoyed the format of the class, with one lecture a week and one day-long lab a week where you would go out into different areas of Vermont and learn about the geology hands on, gathering information with which to write the lab write up. I remember the first write up I wrote was not very good, but Dave gave incredible feedback that allowed me to get much better at geologic writing throughout the semester. He also allowed for rewrites using his suggestions which was great. I learned so much from this class and was a huge fan of it, just not as much late at night when I had a write up due the next day!!

This course was centred around writing 6 ~12 page long labs (including many pics & figures), and then creating a final project using those labs as appendices. It felt very satisfying to hand in this huge final project because it felt manageable, as each of the labs were individually quite difficult to complete but were spaced out rea …Read more