On April 20th, 2017, I was honoured to speak to the University of Toronto Earth Science graduating class at the "Earth Ring" ceremony.

The Earth Science Ring Ceremony was started at the University of Alberta in 1975, and has been adopted by other academic instituations across Canada. It's a ritual of welcome into the profession for newly qualified geologists and geophysicists. Each graduating student is presented with a ring, marked with the cossed hammer of geology and with the seismic trace of geophysics. It symbolizes the commitment and responsibility that comes with the geoscience profession. 

On this important occassion - I was delighted to share some of the remarkable experiences a career in geophysics offers me, awe-inspiring locations, connections with people, and the opportunities for professional and personal growth. My address to the graduating class is below. I certainly enjoyed participating in the ceremony, seeing the faces of new geoscience professionals just starting out on what will hopefully be, a truely rewarding career in earth science.

Jenna McKenzie, Ronacher McKenzie Geoscience 

Earth Ring Ceremony – April 13, 2017 Addressing the graduating geology and geophysics students of the University of Toronto Earth Science Department.

Thank you.

It is my honour to speak to you today. My name is Jenna McKenzie, and I am a geophysicist. If you read my biography, it will say that I studied physics at U of T and focused on geophysics. I went on to work in diamond exploration, and then later in consulting.

Today I want to tell you a bit about what I experienced that is difficult to capture in a few lines of of biography. Some experiences, that occur when you embark on a career in Earth Sciences.

So, in no particular order, here are a few experiences and things that I have learned:

I have toppled over wearing a ground magnetometer, my snowshoes tangling, into a ditch and thought, no one is going to pick me up, I have to get myself up.

I have snowmobiled from one drill site to another, siting GPS holes, and crossed through a herd of thousands of caribou, quietly watching us.

I have flown home from camp, standing up the whole way, chatting happily with pilots on a headset, as we flew in a cargo aircraft built for World War 2.

I have teetered across glacial boulders with geophysical equipment on my back. These boulders extended for miles, so sharp and jagged, left from the glaciation, that they were affectionately named the “veil of tears”.

I have kneeled, alone with my colleague, to take a gravity measurement in the middle of southern Africa, only to lift my head a few minutes later to see a hundred curious villagers quietly watching me.

I have acted in a rush, and for the one drillhole where I did not double-check a GPS location with a colleague, and accidentally sited our last drillhole in our Northwestern Ontario project… in Manitoba.

I had coffee with a lady while grounded from fog in a town in the Arctic. She smiled at me and told me that she wasn’t “from around her”. And that she was born in an igloo. In fact, I have seen men build an igloo, in a matter of hours, large, beautiful, icy and perfect.

I witnessed throat singing, and have come across inukshuks marking good hunting grounds, and stumbled upon circular stone patterns marking old camp sites.

I have found that the back of a helicopter is a great place for a nap at the end of a long day.

I have also found that after seeing our faces after a long, tough day on the tundra, that the helicopter pilot thinks we should skip that nap and opts for hammer heads, rising up and temporary freefalling, better than any roller coaster I can imagine.

I learned that I am strong enough to unload pallets of material from an aircraft, roll hundreds of fuel drums, organize bags of till samples so water logged and heavy that they have become like bricks.

I have found that drill logs from the 1920s look remarkably similar to a drill log recorded today. I have a copy of a telegram from that time that reads “MINERALIZATION AT 300 FT. STOP. INTERSECTION WIDTH 5 FEET. STOP. PLEASE ADVISE. STOP”. Which is basically the same message a colleague sent to me yesterday, almost 100 years later. Except in metric. And by text message.

I learned that I am brave enough to fire a shot gun or send out flares. But despite all of my training, I still panic when I see a bear or wolverine.

I have been alone in the forest in Saskatchewan and panicked when I heard the rustling of what I thought was a bear. I ran, not in a straight line, heart racing, branches flying in my face, to hurl myself into a road, only to find it was my colleagues coming to meet up with me. And they were doubled over with laughter.

I learned that I am capable enough to organize flights, food, fuel. When our cook-slash-first aid attendant flew out to help attend an emergency, I jumped into the kitchen, cooked a roast beef, vegetables, mashed potatoes and made a chocolate cake. I basically learned that I can help keep a small group of people alive, keep the day going normal. And that chocolate cake is always good idea.

I have found that presenting data to senior management is just as stressful at midnight in a field tent on Baffin Island as it is downtown to board members on Bay Street.

I have found that a job well done is always appreciated.

I have found that making a discovery is absolutely thrilling; and then realizing that said discovery is not big enough, not good enough, not valuable enough, after all of your efforts, is rather painful. But we shake it off and try again.

I have cried in frustration when batteries die, or when equipment malfunctions or breaks.

I have sat in silence in some of the most remote corners of Canada.

I have travelled to every inhabited continent and made wonderful friends in every corner of the world.

I have started a company with an amazing colleague and watched us grow in three years from two people with dreams to a busy roster of clients and an additional eight associates.

I have spent weeks helping compile, review and target mineralization on a dataset stretching over 40 km. I have since helped a computer to learn, based on some training data, where mineralization might be, and in doing so, condense what took us weeks into a matter of minutes.

These are just some of my experiences working in Earth Sciences.

Today you will put on your ring, and move forward in your career, you will collect your own stories, you will cry your own tears of frustration, you will make your own mistakes, you will see your own movingly beautiful sights, you will make friends that will last a life time, and you will stand where I do today and encourage the next generation to pursue this field.

That what you have studied is more than just problem sets, or identifying minerals in a lab, or good grades on a transcript.

You will learn that you are smart and strong and resourceful.

That although those rocks have been in the earth for millions and millions of years, that learning about them, exploring for them, understanding them is exciting and can be filled with adventure.

I wish you luck.