Undergraduate Research

I can be indecisive to the point of making other people help me pick what to order from menus or throwing my hands up and pleading ignorance when it comes time to choose a restaurant. But when I know what I want, I really know. I’ve known since I was eight or so that I wanted to become and archaeologist. In spite of my family’s best efforts and their many sleepless nights that’s still my intended career. Originally I didn’t want to do an honors thesis. Senior year is supposed to be fun and less stressful, right? But then I saw the dog burial. I was working on my internship, analyzing ceramics and pulling together information from different sources for a report. I noticed that there was a dog burial on the site I was dealing with and asked my advisor. He told me that there were a bunch of them in the area, that no one had really worked with them and that he had no idea what it meant. I wanted to learn more, so I did some background research and had trouble finding anything relevant. I realized it would take a lot more work to figure out what was going on and that a thesis would be the perfect excuse for doing all that research. Read the rest of this entry »

So…
Starting things can be difficult. I know I usually have trouble knowing just where to begin. That goes for this blog as well.
We’re supposed to track the research process as we go along, unfortunately I’m already rather far in. So, I’m going to have to make some stuff up, because I don’t quite remember just what I did, or how I got certain ideas.

My mom hassled me a bit after freshman year; she told me I wasn’t doing enough at school besides classes and that I’d better find something else to spend time on than hanging out with friends. She was right , as I told her repeatedly in order to get her off the phone, and I’d had the idea to see if there were any internships available in anthropology, since I already knew that’s what I wanted to major in. I also knew that I wanted to be an archaeologist, and that made things easy. There are four archaeologists in the anthropology department, not counting those who work for CW and teach some classes. I went to the one who’d taught my Intro to Archaeology class and asked 1. would he be my adviser 2. did he have any idea where I could do an internship that semester.

Luckily, the answer to both was ‘yes.’

It’s a good idea when looking for an adviser not just to make sure the professor works with what you’re interested in but also that s/he is someone you get along with. If you get along with your advisor you can pop in to ask questions on everything from what classes to take, to finding internships or grad schools. Thankfully mine has the patience to put up with all three subjects and more. Your advisor is also normally the source of research, whether they have  their own projects going or know someone working on something you’d be interested in. Of course people also seek our research separately if they have other interests, but that can be a lot more work.