Should archaeology jobs should happen before college? 1

In 2014, I attended a workshop at the Society for American Archaeology conference in Austin that focused on building a career in archaeology. The workshop was taught by Carol Ellick and Joe Watkins, who are also the authors of the powerful book The Anthropology Graduate Student’s Guide: From Student to a Career (2011). In the workshop, Ellick and Watkins did a short activity that demonstrated the lengthy gap between when most archaeology students decide to work towards a career in archaeology and when we get our first experiences doing archaeology. Most of the workshop attendees had decided that we wanted to become archaeologists as children but didn’t get our first shot at archaeology until we’re in college.

What wasn’t discussed is the fact that most of us will find work doing other jobs long before we get paid to do archaeology, that is, if we ever get paid for archaeology. Those early work experiences shape the way we view work later in life, which is why it is so valuable to work as a teenager or even earlier. All those teenage part-time jobs give us a taste of money management, but it also shows us how we interact with other co-workers, what tasks we do and do not like doing, and gives us motivation to find a better job. We also deal with the rejection that comes with getting laid off/fired and the empowerment that comes with quitting a job.

Individuals working in archaeology also know two other truisms: 1) Doing archaeological fieldwork/lab work is the best way to find out if you like it enough to turn a dream into a job, and 2) If it’s hard to find paid work in archaeology it’s almost impossible to get paid to do archaeology before finishing college.

If doing archaeology is the best way to find out if you’re cut out to become an archaeologist, how can we get young people exposed to the Art of the Trowel BEFORE they pay five figures for an anthropology degree only to find out that the Indiana Jones isn’t real?

Are teenagers lazier than they used to be?

Research shows a smaller percentage of American teens are working, especially when it comes to the quintessential teen summer job. Only 35% of teenagers get summer jobs, but researchers believe this is because so many are taking summer courses or starting college earlier, there is more competition for the positions teens used to hold (i.e. as cashiers and service employees), and because many are choosing unpaid internships over minimum wage jobs (https://www.theatlantic.com/business/archive/2017/06/disappearance-of-the-summer-job/529824/). Of course, there has been little change in the percentage of teens of color who are employed; however, the overall trend is towards fewer teens in the workplace.

Teenagers in the United States are not any lazier than they were when we were teens. They are just coming up in an environment where there is more competition and more emphasis on planning for future careers. This is why getting a taste of archaeology as a teen can be more impactful now than in the past:

• Today’s teens are looking towards college, which is increasingly seen as a step towards a career.
• More teens are willing to do internships, which is great for archaeology—a field that thrives on unpaid work (This is sad but true. We do a lot of #freearchaeology because we know nobody else will do it if we don’t).
• Finding paid positions for youth of color is one of the best ways we will be able to reach them. I’ve mentioned this before (http://www.succinctresearch.com/how-to-get-more-minorities-involved-in-archaeology/)
• Most importantly: Getting kids of all demographics to experience archaeology, by any means necessary, is THE best way to get all people involved. Folks in Public Archaeology have known this for decades (http://www.succinctresearch.com/how-to-really-get-minorities-involved-in-archaeology/).

This blog post is inspired by an article by Blake Gossard that was posted on Medium (https://medium.com/@blakegossard/jobs-should-come-before-college-a7f27fb98ce6). Gossard advocates high school students should work before going to college. I wholeheartedly agree. If you come from a low-income background, this concept is nothing new.

I started working from an early age (i.e. as soon as I could rake leaves) because my family was working class. There was no money for extra toys, candy, or other frivolous purchases, my parents wanted me to learn the value of hard work, and they wanted me to learn how to manage money. So, I got a small allowance when I was around 7-years-old and started working for neighbors as soon as I could handle a rake. When it comes to work and money, my childhood taught me several things:

1) Nobody, not even my parents, was going to give me everything I wanted,

2) Money was a tool that could provide for my material needs,

3) You need to work if you want money, and

4) Your services will always be in demand if you do good work. But, if you do a sh*tty job, nobody is going to want you to work for them.

The working class understands work is a way of life, but this realization is not just limited to the poor. You can find parents in all class segments that teach their children the importance of working for wages, but there are a greater number of upper and middle-class families that can provide for their kids without making them get a job. The key is getting your kids to get a job, even if you can afford otherwise.

This has serious implications for college undergraduates because a significant demographic come from families where they were never made to work for wages. It’s hard for me to imagine, but a lot of college students do not have jobs, nor have they ever had a real job before coming to school. I believe this is detrimental to their work life after graduation for several reasons:

• College graduates with no prior work experience will find it difficult to get work after graduation because they have no experience.
• They will have unrealistic expectations because it takes time to understand that work experience builds upon itself, providing opportunities for upward mobility.
• With very little work experience, these individuals may not have the attention to detail and processes that employers are looking for.
• It will take years to understand how the mundane tasks that keep the business going play a role in the company’s larger mission.
• Once in the workplace, these new hires will expect rapid upward mobility without understanding that advancement is dependent upon proving oneself through sequentially more difficult tasks and making sure that supervisors are aware of these accomplishments.
• Finally, it takes time to learn that the person who advances in the workplace is not always the best, brightest, or most connected. The workplace is capricious and unfair. The best among us will not always be rewarded. But, since everyone needs money, everybody needs to work. We all must figure out ways to keep working despite the emotional toll witnessing unfairness can take on our enthusiasm and motivation.

These are all lessons I learned in the many jobs I’ve held, especially those in archaeology. They are all lessons that my co-workers have learned as well. In fact, as an archaeologist I learned more about the psychological and emotional impacts being an employee than I did in any previous job because I was so dedicated to that identity. Being an archaeologist is the culmination of a life-long dream so getting laid off, passed up for promotions, and career stagnation had a greater impact. It took years for me to come around to realizations I’d made about the workplace based on earlier jobs.

Providing opportunities to do archaeology BEFORE college

Every job has its pros and cons. It’s best to figure these out as soon as possible so we can make adjustments later on down the career path. As a teenager and undergraduate, I worked many jobs—each horribly great in its own way. Here are some of the highlights:

I was a dishwasher at a burrito restaurant—PRO: I only had to work on weekends and finally had enough money to take my high school girlfriend out on dates. CONS: I spent each weekend wet and stinking like carne asada. And, the hot sauce was so hot the habanero sauce infused into my skin, burning my eyes hours after I’d left work

I made pizzas at Chuck E. Cheese’s—PRO: I got to play tons of video games for free. CONS: I had to dress up like Chuck E. and dance for children.

I worked at a big box warehouse store with a name that rhymes with Nostco: PROS: The pay was pretty good and increased predictably over time. CONS: I had to deal with customers and promotions were largely based on tenure so all I had to do to make it to higher positions was just had to do my job day-after-day for years on end until I’d outlasted all the other people at the warehouse. Keep doing this for decades.

It was this final position that pushed me over the edge. This was also when I took a leave of absence to attend my undergraduate field school in rural northeastern Oklahoma on a historical farmstead. When it wasn’t raining, it was hot. There were ticks aplenty and I spent my first week using a pickaxe to chisel an excavation unit through a chip-seal driveway. I loved every minute of it. This is when I realized archeology was for me.

I can’t help but wonder what would have happened if I’d taken that field school and realized I hated archaeology. I was going into my senior year of undergrad. What would I have done if I’d arrived in Oklahoma, started grinding away, and realized, “I don’t want to be an archaeologist anymore?”

This is what happens to more than half of all the field school students I’ve interacted with. Half of the students realize they hate doing archaeology fieldwork, but they suck it up to get college credit. The remaining 50% don’t mind the hard labor but they realize they wouldn’t want to do it for a living. The rest of the field school students I’ve taught would like to do archaeology, but they aren’t willing to do whatever it takes to continue in the industry, so they complete their anthropology degree and move on to something else. Of the dozens of field school students I’ve taught since 2005, I’ve only kept up with the few who are still doing archaeology. Only one continued on to get a PhD, about 5 went on to do archaeology (most of them only did it for a few years), and the remaining 98% of students I’ve ever taught have given up on the idea.

I wish I had taught all of those students when they were still in high school. They would have been given a chance to see what this game is all about and decide that it was or was not for them long before they’d enrolled in college. I believe having this experience would increase the follow-through rate of archaeology field school students who go on to work in archaeology because field schools would be full of students who already knew what they were getting and were serious about doing this as a career. It might cause a decrease in field school enrollments but would increase the quality of students in field schools.

Archaeological Fieldwork: the fulfillment of a life’s dream while still in High School

I’m not sure we will ever be able to pay high school students to do actual archaeology. It is possible for a well-connected high schooler to get hired working at a CRM company and I believe this is the most probable way for a teenager to get archaeology experience as a youth.

Most CRM companies have a lot of small tasks that need to get done but the company has: 1) few monetary resources to dedicate to these tasks, 2) too few employees to take these tasks on, 3) overworked employees who can’t fit this into their schedule and, 4) other things for their archaeologists to do rather than these small tasks. Also, these small tasks in themselves are not enough to justify hiring a part-time staff member to do.

All the CRM companies I’ve ever worked for could have really used a part-time high schooler to do a range of basic tasks that were inefficiently being done by expensive archaeologists. Tasks like maintaining equipment (sharpening shovels/trowels, cleaning the air filters on blowers, maintaining screens, ect.), taking care of the company’s library, doing light labwork (sweeping/mopping, ordering artifact bags, ect.), shuttling packages to FedEx, and other things are all tasks that need to be done and are currently not being done by expensive archaeologists. They also take scarce administrative staff away from core responsibilities. These are all examples of what a part-time, high school student could do for a CRM company.

I can hear some of you hollering about this now. “If we hire high school students to do those tasks, what are the techs going to do when they’re back at the home office?” The goal is to get high school students some experience but not at the expense of actual archaeologists. Companies do not need to keep these students employed über alles because they do not have families to support and student loans to pay. We’re simply trying to give them a chance to say they worked for an archaeology company on their resume. When times are good, have a high schooler doing those tasks. You let them go when you need to find work for field techs.

Is this harsh for the high schooler? Yes. But, they will also be learning another important aspect of doing CRM: You will probably get laid off. Better start planning for it from the beginning.

As far as getting paid fieldwork experience for high schoolers, I don’t know if this is going to happen. And, I don’t think we should be replacing field techs with high school laborers. That takes us back to the Depression-era roots of CRM that are not looked upon particularly fondly. While there may be a decrease in working teenagers in the United States, paid positions in archaeology have never really been an option for teenagers. This means getting a job as an archaeologist still isn’t possible for those who aspire to be one after graduating college.

We can, however, provide unpaid volunteer opportunities for high school students. Public archaeology projects across the country are open to high school kids that want to experience archaeological fieldwork. I’ve worked on several of these before in the past, most recently in Boise, Idaho.

There are also a few landmark programs that pay students to do fieldwork. Most focus on providing experience for underrepresented students. Examples include the Urban Archaeology Corps in Washington D.C. (https://www.npr.org/2015/09/05/437768166/teens-dig-into-black-history-as-urban-archeologists) and the Latino Heritage Internship Program in the Southwest (https://www.nps.gov/subjects/tellingallamericansstories/upload/LHHTA_Book_V4-508-Compliant.pdf).

Paid field positions for high school students in cultural resource management should focus on filling labor voids and helping them see what it’s like to be a professional archaeologist. These positions have the potential to screen aspiring archaeologists before they drop five figures on a college degree for a job they might not enjoy. This is not just a service for the students. It has the potential to increase the quality of archaeology students in college and cultural resource management archaeologists.

What do you think? How can we get high school students archaeology experience before college? Write a comment below or send me an email.

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