For two years fateful years in college, I was a geology & geophysics major, until I realized that I wasn't smart enough. But during that time, I spent a bunch of hours looking through a microscope to view and describe mineral samples. There is an awful lot of interesting stuff to see that can't normally be seen.

So it was very cool to come across a feature on the New York Times about the Nikon International Small World Competition. Who knew such a thing existed?