Hello fellow Mindaters! I'm a PhD student at the University of Michigan, due to graduate sometime in 2009. I study igneous petrology and geochemistry, and it was through this that I developed an interest in mineralogy. I am a very serious collector, primarily of thumbnail to micromount sized specimens, focusing on rare species and Ohio minerals (I grew up outside of Cleveland). They don't pay graduate students too much, so I've found that I can afford a lot more specimens by selling some material on Ebay, where I go by the user ID "merlyn8804" (I've always liked Arthurian legend). I also enjoy field collecting and have collected in several limestone quarries on the Findlay Arch in Ohio, which produces excellent Celestine, Fluorite and Sphalerite as well as some other species. I've also collected twice now at a syenite quarry near Magnet Cove, Arkansas, the Jones Mill. This quarry has produced an exciting suite of microminerals, and remains fairly poorly collected, so new things often show up every time you collect.