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Geology

Plus a little more

By Genevieve ArmstorffPublished 3 years ago 5 min read
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My name is Genevieve and I’m currently 28 years old. There’s really no better place to begin than the beginning though forgive me for my less specific time frame as I recently lost 14 + years of my memory and as of now, the past is still like a dream. I had everything I could need. A good family, a fulfilling life, a smart mind, etc. Unfortunately, I have bipolar disorder and suffer from major depression. I’ve always been talented at almost everything I give a try, but life felt like a pressure I didn’t understand and couldn’t handle. A couple of years after high school and some time at a community college, I chose to take a Geology 1 course during the summer that was 5 days a week, 5 hours a day, for 5 weeks. It sounded slightly intriguing and like a challenge I desperately needed. Now, I was most certainly not a straight A student. I often barely passed classes with C’s. One issue was my ADHD and another was the depression, but most of all I struggled with a complete lack of motivation. See, I did anything you could think of as a child. I traveled all over, danced tap and ballet, played the flute, played the viola, participated in multiple clubs like chess, math, etc. My need to explore was being filled. When I got to college, I realized I had absolutely no idea as to what I wanted my path in life to be. At least, until I found Geology.

After the first class, I was completely hooked. Geology was perfect and I couldn’t believe I hadn’t found it until now. Everything we know today and everything we will know in the future stems from the beginning of time. Geology incorporates every field of science, and it quickly became the outlet for my out-of-control mind. If I couldn’t concentrate on the time scale any longer I could always just study anything else, I wanted because all the knowledge out there can be used as a tool in understanding the way our entire universe works. My C’s became straight A’s and I soon earned 3 associate degrees. I transferred to the University of Arizona to pursue a bachelor’s in the natural sciences and geology. Around the end of the first semester, I had my breakdown. I had lost connection to reality and though I had found a study that motivated me, I know longer could handle the depression that had been there all my life. After a suicide attempt, I was sent to a behavioral hospital to be put under watch. That’s when my world began slipping away.

Medication after medication was prescribed despite zero effectiveness. The thought of suicide was all I thought about and as a last resort the doctors suggested Electro-Convulsive Therapy or otherwise known as shock treatments. Desperate, I agreed to the treatments. They continued until November 2020 when I refused to continue. During the years I was treated, I lost 14 years of my memory, which the doctors say in time, shall come back. However, the years during the treatment may never return. I was living each day in a haze without any knowledge of the previous day. I lost a lot of close people in my life. They worked extremely hard to help me get through it, but they got no thanks from me. I was in a way, unaware of all they were doing for me and how troublesome it was for them to be with me, a girl obsessed with wanting to die who has the mind of a teenager and constantly makes the same mistakes over and over and over again because she never learns. I was a mess in every sense of the word. Then one day I woke up. I don’t remember when or how, but I knew I needed to change something. I quit ECT and stopped the majority of my medication. Don’t worry, I was extra careful about stopping each one and took it slow. It’s now 7 months later and I can’t tell you if the ECT worked chemically through my brain or if the struggle finally forced me to see the truth, but I’m no longer suicidal. I still have my down days, but my world is definitely improving. Two days ago, I attended a class that I’ve enrolled in for the summer. It’s Geology 1. One thing to know about my memory is that it’s triggered by random words or events happening around me. In my past, I had memorized 600 digits of pi. Yesterday I tested myself. I’m down to 100, but to me, this means something. In just my two class meetings that I’ve so far attended, my memories of the natural sciences have been flooding in at an extremely high rate. By next spring, I predict I’ll be ready to return to a university for my degree. After all, it sounds like a challenge I just can’t ignore.

These past years, I’ve been living on disability as a dependent to my parents. I have not been able to work or save money for school. I’ll hopefully be able to tutor in the fall as I once did for a mineralogy course, but I’m already 28 now and I have so many other responsibilities that require what little finances I have. I once started a research project in which I identified minerals using their unique image through a mass spectrometer lens and I received a prestigious award from the community college when I had completed my associates. Geology is my passion, and it gives me a way of seeing life everywhere I go instead of death. I’m entering this contest because I need funding for my education, which I then plan on using to help solve major global issues. I could try to tell you how much I believe I can do something great with my studies, but that’s subjective reasoning. I’m asking you to trust me and let me prove to you with evidence that I can help this world. Would I be so willing to start over and go through it all again if I didn’t think I could do it? Give me chemistry, math, physics, biology, anthropology, oceanography, and anything you have because I need it all and there’s no one who is more determined to study it all.

Thank you for your consideration,

Genevieve Armstorff

Science
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About the Creator

Genevieve Armstorff

I study everything.

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