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Why GSA Membership
Is Important to Me
5th International Mariah “Maisie” Richards in Denali National Park, USA.
EarthCache Event
W hen I was little, the tooth fairy would bring
Saturday, 24 Sept. 2016 | Denver, Colorado, USA me pretty rocks instead of the more common
silver dollars. I never knew there was a whole
EarthCaching gets people out in the field to learn about community of people that similarly valued
their planet first-hand. Participants in this annual event will the shine of quartz over a crisp dollar bill until I attended my
learn all about EarthCaching, interact with EarthCachers first GSA meeting.
from around the globe, meet EarthCache developers and
reviewers, find local EarthCaches, and engage in many other I graduated from Colorado College in 2011 and immedi-
exciting and educational activities. The 2016 event will be held ately headed up to Denali National Park and Preserve to look
in conjunction with the GSA Annual Meeting, which provides for dinosaur footprints through GSA’s GeoCorps America
a unique opportunity for GSA members to connect with Program. That research led me to my first GSA Annual
the EarthCaching and Geocaching communities! For details, Meeting the following fall, where I spent most of my time,
go to www.earthcache.org, www.facebook.com/earthcache, truth be told, perusing the extensive exhibit booths dedicated
or contact Matt Dawson at mdawson@geosociety.org. to glittery rocks and fossil jewelry.
Let the Earth be your teacher! Up until that point, I had been intimidated by phrases such
as “networking” and “LinkedIn,” until I recognized that I am
GSA TODAY | MARCH/APRIL 2016 an inherently chatty person and “networking” is really just
casual chatting with fellow professionals. Realizing this, I
approached a speaker who stuck out to me in a panel session
on geology in government. Because of this conversation, she
later became my supervisor at Death Valley National Park as
well as a lifelong mentor.
I continued my GSA membership throughout the following
years as I dabbled in forest ecology and returned seasonally
to Denali as a park employee. My introduction to Denali
through GeoCorps led to research that resulted in a masters
project proposal that received the Arthur D. Howard Award
this fall and is funded in large part by Denali.
You can only make sense of and see patterns in the choices
you’ve made in self reflection, but now I can see a very clear
trend. GSA, in the forms of inspiring programs, grants and
awards, and beautiful rocks, has been there to help guide me
along my winding path that began when I found a shiny
quartz crystal beneath my pillow.
Mariah “Maisie” Richards
Graduate Student at Colorado
State University
GSA Member since 2010
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