About

My name is MJ. I hold both a bachelors and master’s degree in geology and have quite a bit of field experience. I attended the “standard” field camp every geology student needs to receive a Bachelor’s of Science degree. Like many field camps, mine was in the-middle-of-nowhere Montana. I also completed two shorter field courses for graduate school, and these were located in the Pacific Northwest.

This website was created in hopes to help field students identify the equipment they will need for field based activities. I’ve noticed that many students are unsure of what equipment is needed for the field and most school websites don’t do a good job of identifying the essentials. If you already poked around some of my pages, you may have noticed that all the equipment comes from Amazon. Buying items through Amazon is very easy since you can shop around, leave items in your cart, read reviews, create a wishlists and when you are ready – bam!, all your equipment will be at your doorstep.

To clarify, this website has no affiliation with any brand! However, having gone through school and multiple field courses, I have an idea what the best items are for the field and some brands are a lot better than others. For example, the only type of field notebook I would recommend is the Rite in the Rain and the only brand of hammer I would recommend is Estwing. In essence, I just want to help you get the best bang for your buck, particularly because many of these items are investments and only need to be bought once.

Although this website is geared towards geology fields students, all students who take classes in the field are welcome! Environmental students, field biologists, archaeologists, etc. The hope is that as this website grows, equipment needed for other field activities will be outlined and identified.

Nonetheless, thanks for stopping by and please reach out to thefieldstudent@gmail.com if you have suggestions, comments, or concerns!

This page was last updated on January 16, 2017