“School has become the world religion of a modernized proletariat, and makes futile promises of salvation to the poor of the technological age.” Ivan Illich, Deschooling Society (1971) I’ve decided to take some time to write a short summary of my PhD at the University of Arizona. Sometime in 2012, […]
Sometimes you read the obvious, but it doesn’t really sink in. Sometimes the obvious sinks right in to your core. I just finished reading two blog posts this week about the travails of post-PhD life. In 2011, Roderick asked “Is your PhD Worthless?” Partially answering his own question, Roderick mentions […]
After months being cooped up in a classroom, I’m getting ready to go do some archaeology field work this summer and was putting together a list of items I need to buy or replace. Some people I know have called me a gear whore because I like to buy outdoors […]
A few weeks ago, I received one of the best gifts I’ve been given all year. It was a simple baseball hat that was sent to me from the kind folks at Forestry Suppliers. In case you didn’t know, Forestry Suppliers has a sweet archaeology field tools catalog (BTW: That […]
I’m still flying back from #SAA2014. Still sitting in first-class. Still hearing Lourde’s “Royals” playing in my head. Free Heineken? Why yes. I’ll have two. As I mentioned in my earlier post, Part I, I heard some gloomy information about the extreme competition in the cultural resource management archaeology industry. […]
“I don’t always go to the Society for American Archaeology (SAA) annual meetings, but when I do, I prefer them to be in a cool place with a ton of rad dive bars.” The world’s most moderately interesting archaeologist (Me). I’m currently on the flight back from #SAA2014 and happened […]
The first thing I noticed when getting off the plan in Austin: humidity. It’s been a long time since I felt the warm, moist embrace of the Earth’s atmosphere. Living in Tucson, the air feels like a blast furnace that’s just warming up in April. Here in Austin, it feels […]
In the course of my random discussions about working in cultural resource management archaeology and historic preservation, I seem to have come across the same conversation time and time again. It all revolves around some “hell project”— a project that went so FUBAR that the company ended up losing money. […]
This is a question I ask myself a lot. Am I supposed to be an archaeologist? Is this the best career for me? How can I know that? I’ve recently started listening to The New Man podcast hosted by Tripp Lanier. (FYI: It’s not just for men. My wife is […]
This week, the HISTARCH listserv and the rest of the blogosphere celebrated the crushing defeat of NatGeo’s poorly planned series Nazi War Diggers. As I wrote before, the show was basically a glorification of battlefield archaeological site looting with the added bonus of human remains desecration. It was an all-around […]
