I used to think the Midwest was boring—just endless fields and quiet towns. Then I spent months chasing the ghosts of volcanoes that no one here even remembers. I drilled cores, ran tests, mapped rocks that looked like nothing to everyone else. My advisor said, "Dormant doesn't mean dead." I repeated that in my head while the grant rejections piled up and my friends moved on to jobs that didn’t require explaining why I cared about rocks no one could see. Sometimes I think the volcanoes are lucky. They get to sleep. I just keep running protocols, waiting for something to erupt—data, funding, maybe even a sense of purpose. The landscape is quiet, but my mind never is. If there’s power hidden under all this silence, I haven’t found it yet. But I’m still digging, even if I don’t know why. #Science #ScienceFatigue #HiddenHistory