Pictured above: Young Nicollette Mitchell is seen in the middle photo doing field work during her winter term break. Profile images of Nicollette.
An interview with Masters student Nicollette Mitchell
Nicollette Mitchell is a masters student at the University of Arizona-School of geosciences. Ms Mitchell studies past climates of the Amazon and is an alumni of Oberlin College and Conservatory and Fiorello H. LaGuardia High School of Music, Art and Performing Arts. She is also a member of the UCLIMS team and DroughtNexus Project. In her role as the paleoclimate lab manager, she has been supervising 3 summer lab technicians *cue lab minions Colton, Jared and I*.
Please introduce yourself, hometown and current work.
NM: I’m Nicollette Mitchell, formerly Nicollette Buckle. I am currently a masters student at the University of Arizona. Before I was here, I was a student at Oberlin College. Before then, I Iived in New York City and before I was there I lived in Jamaica- the country, not the neighbourhood in Queens,NY. I came here to learn about this whole climate change debacle and I’ve learnt a lot about programming in Matlab and troubleshooting.
How did you end up doing geosciences?
I went to a performance high school, called LaGuardia High School. Class of 2009- woop woop! It was a very competitive arts school that brought people from all over the city and we had to audition when we were still in middle school and your test scores had to be really high. I did Opera workshop, which is why I ended up choosing Oberlin because I wanted to take performance classes from the Conservatory.
When I was in high school the dean of sciences always talked about diversity in the sciences and the need to have more women and scientists of colour. She would pick on me because my test scores were really high and so I ended up taking Earth Sciences and it just made sense to me. The concepts and the drawings all made sense to me. Then when I got to Oberlin I took Biology on a pre med track because I was a little pretentious and thought being a doctor was the most distinguished thing.*giggles😂😂* Anyway, Biology kicked my butt and I took Geology 101 with Karla Hubbard after my roommate took it and ended up switching my major from Biology to Geology and adding an Africana Studies Major. Anyway, i stumbled into geosciences and ended up really enjoying it. I think most people say the same thing, they kind of ended up taking refuge in geosciences and realising that they like it, and that’s how my story goes too.
How did you end up at UofA and why did you decide to come here
I took a year off after my undergrad at Oberlin and when I was applying for graduate school I thought about all the classes I had taken when I was an undergrad and what things stuck out for me and realised that there was a pattern. I had enjoyed taking classes where I could talk about the history of developing countries and the environmental history of the earth and man’s impact on climate. I wanted to continue thinking about how climate change is affecting development and how is it affecting developing and developed countries differently. I mean clearly the impacts of climate change is disproportionately affecting developed and developing countries. So I was looking for programs that would allow me to think about this and my current advisor Jonathan Overpeck’s name kept coming up and so I reached out to him. He responded to me in 2 hours and I was really impressed because he is very outspoken, solution-oriented when it comes to climate change and very busy. I had also emailed other professors and he was one of the few that responded to me. He was also super helpful with my graduate school application process and helped me understand how the application process worked.I didn’t care so much for where I was going than who I was going to work with.
Can you tell us a little about your research and how you came to be the lab manager?
I took sedimentology and environmental geology when I was a graduate student and I really liked sediment, you can see it, you can touch it and it makes sense that things accumulate over time.*giggles* My whole application to graduate school was about using sediment to understand the environment and the climate. So when I got here, I was excited to start working on that. The lab that we currently use had not been in use for years, it was covered in a layer of dust. The other graduate students hadn’t really done any significant lab work with sediment and our advisor was a little rusty too. Luke and Garrison had just came back from their field work in Ecuador and had brought the cores back but hadn’t done any work on them. I always knew what kind of research I was going to do and my struggle was how I was going to do it. We had to develop lab techniques and Luke was kind of helpful with that, we are self-taught. I also started calling alumni who I know worked on the lab or published related work and asked them about their lab process so we could figure out a clear lab method. Since then I’ve been managing the lab, acquiring data and analyzing it. Also realising that sometimes all these squiggles-from the data- have nothing to do with the environment, and that’s interesting too. Figuring out what they are about is interesting.
Have you had any unfulfilled expectations or expectations gap when it comes to your move to Arizona or your graduate school experience?
I expected that when I came here I would maybe be learning from more senior graduate students and my advisor, but then I soon realised I was going to be learning from myself, teaching myself. Graduate school is just not what anyone expects it to be. It’s a lot more lone rangering it and it’s a lot more isolated than one would like or hope. Everyone is doing their own thing, all the time, even the people in the other lab who are doing lake sediments are using different proxies.
I had to figure out LOI, charcoal methodologies independently. I had to instal the XRF machine. Sometimes there are no methodologies but then you figure it out.
So what do you if you can’t find the methodology online and your advisor is not here?
You have to look for original methods papers and send emails. I have sent a lot of cold emails asking people about methodologies, talking to alumni. There was one alumnus, her name is Sara and she had impeccable record keeping and her notes became our lab guide for some of our methodologies. She even wrote a lot about how the XRF machine was dying.
*** Sidenote: Dear Sarah, The paleoclimate graduate students thank you immensely for your impeccable note keeping 👏👏 ***
What has been the successes and good memories that you will take away from living in Arizona, being in graduate school and being a geoscientist?
I love the mountains, I am definitely going to miss looking at them. I am lazy but I wish I had more time to go hiking. I have also enjoyed being able to bring other people into the project. I got satisfaction whenever I had mastered a technique and wrote it down.The lab now has more documentation, original methods papers for all the different proxies. I appreciate that my interns are self-sufficient. I have enjoyed being able to teach them methodologies to the point where they are comfortable executing them without my supervision.
As you are getting ready to finish your thesis, and leaving Arizona. What are you excited about?
I am excited about new challenges, i’ve been working on the same project now for 3 years. I am also excited about working with people. I want to be able to work with a team that attempts to design concrete solutions to climate problems. I was a little bit of an odd students because I didn’t come into science for science's sake, I came in with a goal that has societal impact and so I am looking forward to going back to doing that.
To finish off, what do you do for fun when you are not working on your thesis or in the lab?
I like playing fetch with my cat Lucky, he makes my life so much better. I also enjoy singing in church, I like going hiking when I wake up early. I try to do things that get me out of my head often. Watching movies, hanging out with my cats and hiking.
Thank you so much for being a great supervisor Nicollette, we appreciate all your support and guidance. Good luck with your thesis and your job search.
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