Master thesis project at the Califomia Institute of Technology,
September 1998 - July 1999
by: Nineke Oerlemans
Two years ago I decided I wanted to visit an other university and do my M.Sc. research abroad. Intrigued by volcanism and earthquakes I wrote prof. T. Heaton from the
California Institute of Technology (Caltech) an email and asked him i f he had a project I
could work on. After a year of e-mails, letters, phone calls and forms to f i l l out, I had a
project, a place to stay, a visum and a plane ticket to Los Angeles.
The Caltech accepted me as a "special" student. This means that I didn't have to
pay full tuition, but have all the other rights and deeds of a "normal" student. I even got a
tuition award and a stipend from Caltech. I didn't have to do a GRE-test nor the
TOEFL-test, this saved me a whole extra set of paper-work. The term "special" student in my
opinion is not such a good word to use. Certainly because most of the other new students
that you meet during orientation are "normal" undergraduate or graduate students and I
didn't feel very comfortable to introduce myself as: " Hi, I am Nineke, a "special"
student". I would prefer the term "exchange" or "visiting" student. You don't want to be
"special" when you first meet new people.
The first two weeks were introduction weeks. First with the international students.
In this week we got a lot of information about the differences between our own countries
and the US and California in particular. This was all very usefull and besides the
information I got to meet a lot of other students and all the facilities at campus. The
second week was with the new graduate students. These are the people I ended up
hanging out with most of the time. I made a lot of american and foreign friends from
different departments. The language was not a problem. Coming from the Netherlands,
you are so very much used to the english language already that people often
I arranged housing through a Caltech affiliated housing program. Most of the first
year graduate students stay at the Catalina appartments. One, two or four bedroom
appartments. The appartment complex is next to campus, what made it possible to walk
to campus every day.
The department I worked in this year is the department of Geological and
Planetary Sciences, and I spend most of my time in the Seismological Laboratory
(Seismolab). Professor Heaton has a double tenure and therefore has an office in both the
Seismolab and the Civil Engineering building. This made communication difficult, as he
was always difficult to find. The project I have been working on the past year, was a
completely new project. Nobody in the Seismolab had been working on it and even in the
litterature was little to find. The goal was to find a relation between the location of an
earthquake, the fault mechanism (in what direction did slip occur) and the similarity
between the waveforms from two earthquakes happening close to one another, being
recorded at the same seismometer. Starting of with real data, this was a very time
consuming project, as all the data had to be retrieved and looked at by hand. Other
graduate students in the Seismolab were very friendly in helping me to find my way in
the Seismolab. Explaining new computer programs I had to work with, telling me who to talk to, etc. Without them I wouldn't have been able to do what I did this year.
At first the contact with my own department in the Netherlands was poor. M y
professor in Utrecht was apparently so busy that he didn't have time to reply to my e¬ mails and he didn't show any interest in what I was doing. This was not such a very nice
experience. It made me feel very alone in what I was doing so far away from home.
Therefore I decided to write my e-mails also to an other professor in Utrecht and she did
reply to my e-mails. We agreed on the fact that she was the one I would communicate
with the rest of the year and she will be the person grading my M.Sc. thesis. I am very
grateful! for her help.
Next to my research I have also followed a few graduate courses in the seismolab of
Being in Southern California, gave me plenty opportunities to visit interesting
places. San Diego and San Francisco, but also numerous state parks like the Grand
Canyon, Yosemite, Death Valley and Joshua Tree. The advantage of living in Los
Angeles is that there are so many different things to do at a relatively close distance. The
beach as well as the ski-areas are within a one-hour drive, the forest-rich mountains lie
next to the desserts and there are of course the city of Pasadena and the clubs in L.A. to
visit. Together with friends in Pasadena as well as with visitors from the Netherlands, I have seen quite a bit of the area. Travelling has to be done by car and not, as a lot of
students in Europe will do, by train or other ways of public transport. Fortunately I have a
lot of american friends who have a car, so mostly transport is not an issue.
I would like to thank the "Molengraaf fonds" for giving me the opportunity to go
to California by awarding me this fellowship. It has been and is still a great experience in
which I have learned a lot not only about geofysics but also about myself and other
people.
Yours sincerely.
Nineke Oerlemans
Adress till juiy 30, 1999: From August 1999:
Buys Ballotstraat 21 Seismolab
Mail-Code 252-21 Utrecht
Pasadena, CA, 91125
