I recently had a conversation with a college undergraduate who was at #SHA2016 looking for a job. He spoke with such intensity and stared me in the eye as he spoke. “I don’t care what job I get after graduation. I’ll do anything. Seriously.” Those same eyes flickered with enthusiasm, […]
Some people drive cars festooned with bumper stickers. It seems like, in the West, more than half of the cars and trucks traveling our roads have at least one. A few of us have covered our cars in them. Regardless of how many you have, bumper stickers seek to express […]
This is a summary of what I learned from my second year as an archaeology PhD student. Sometimes it feels like the world is falling down around us and the only light at the end of the tunnel comes from the opening where we entered this subterranean realm. Human beings […]
Yesterday, I received good news. The property owner of the Erma Hayman House in Boise, Idaho has given permission to conduct an archaeology project on this property. This will be the next step in my dissertation work on The River Street Digital History Project, but it is also an excellent […]
Small liberal arts colleges are starting to lose the battle against the “educational-industrial complex.” This month, two colleges in the eastern United States—Sweet Briar College and Tennessee Temple University—announced they will close their doors this year (2015). Insurmountable financial challenges and declining enrollment were cited as the reason for the […]
We’ve all seen the following clauses in a job description: — A combination of education and experience which includes College-level education or training that provided knowledge equivalent to that described above, plus appropriate technical experience or additional education. — The work experience must have included archeology field experience, which may […]
Last week, Fox News helped my dissertation research immensely. I learned about five books that I definitely need to read based on their coverage of a course at Arizona State University titled “U.S. Race Theory and the Problem of Whiteness.” The course is taught by Professor Lee Bebout who has […]
This morning, I read just about the most frightening story a young PhD student/aspiring academician could read. In case you didn’t know, Stefan Grimm, a toxicology professor at Imperial College London, ended his life in September, 2014 at the age of 51. What drove this prodigious professor to kill himself? […]
Depending on your sources, between 49 and 66% of all college professors are adjuncts. Full-time, untenured faculty composes 19 percent of professors, which means, at most, only a third of professors are on the tenure track. As a PhD student, I’ve been steadily encouraged to keep up hope about becoming […]
This weekend, the unthinkable happened. I got a 60% on an assignment in one of my historic preservation graduate seminars. I haven’t done this poorly on an assignment since 9th grade geometry. How the hell did this happen?
