Have you ever wondered what a day in the life of an archaeologist is like? Well, in today’s post, I’m answering (hopefully) some of your questions.
My favorite part of being an archaeologist is getting access to sites otherwise closed to the public. Here I am at the Villa of Good Fortune in Olynthos.
A quick caveat: although some aspects of my days are things everyone experiences, in general, my days will probably look pretty different from what you expect. This is because I don’t dig in the trenches. I am a member of the project’s pottery team. We are responsible for cataloguing and analyzing the ceramic finds that everyone else digs up!
Want to know a secret? Although I’ve been asked to give talks and lead workshops on topics related to teaching, I haven’t taught a course since Spring 2020!
All the pedagogy-related public-facing work that I’ve done over the last two and a half years has been based largely on four things.
First, I’ve reflected a lot on my own teaching (and learning) experiences. You can find some of those reflections in posts I’ve rounded up here.
Second, I’ve heard a lot from my peers about the courses they’re teaching. Sometimes, I’ve even offered advice based on my own experiences teaching those same courses.
Third, since I’m almost always on Twitter, I get a lot of inspiration from discussions of teaching on social media.
All this reflecting and researching over the years, however, has (finally!) led to this moment. In the fall I will be back in the classroom as I begin my tenure-track position. This means that I can now practice what I preach – and have been preaching for years.
In this week’s post, I’m highlighting some of the ways that I am planning to make my courses equitable and inclusive of all students. Clearly, I haven’t had a chance to test these approaches yet, so you can take them with a grain of salt. But I think that they reflect my overarching teaching philosophy well.
I first started giving presentations at professional conferences nearly ten years ago.
Back then, I only submitted abstracts for things I’d already written, such as seminar papers. In more recent years, I’ve transformed 40+ page dissertation chapters into talks of various lengths for various contexts.
A few weeks ago, you may have seen that I shared some big news. The news? I landed a tenure-track position as an assistant professor in the Department of Classics at Randolph-Macon College – that is, of course, after preparing and submitting a slew of application materials and surviving a nerve-wracking campus interview.
Due to the timing of everything, I couldn’t benefit from what must have been an incredible series of workshops on the job search offered by the WCC.
Instead, most of what I learned about how to be successful on the job market came from two sources.
First, my incredible mentors. From drafting and revising and practicing job talks to setting up mock interviews to giving me advice on negotiating a contract, I couldn’t have done any of this without my support system.
Second, I spent a lot – and I mean a lot – of time reading posts across the internet relating to the academic job search. My Google search history can probably attest to that. I also spent an indeterminate amount of time combing through posts on Twitter, like this one:
Been interviewing job candidates lately, and been seeing a lot of people who I know are better than they came across. Some thoughts about how to improve your interview performance – a megathread of loosely organized thoughts and opinions …
It makes you seem interested in the position and the institution (even if you’re not). It’s also a great way to take a break from talking and let someone else take over.
Happy November! In case you missed it, in August I decided to make my blogging comeback with a round-up of resources centered around a back-to-school theme. In honor of last month’s installment bringing us to ten posts on the topic, this month’s round-up is all about the hidden curriculum.
The hidden curriculum series began nearly two years ago (the first post went live on January 28, 2021). As each post reminds us, the series was borne from the observation that there is a lot that we, as academics, are expected to know but are never taught.
I figured it might be helpful to have all the posts in the series to date all in one place for ease of access.
In addition, you will find related posts providing general advice and resources, as well as links to other resources I’ve found useful from around the internet (mostly Twitter).
For those of you who are new here, the hidden curriculum includes a set of things we’re expected to know how to do, from attending a conference for the first time to applying for funding to going on the job market, without actually being taught them. This month’s installment is all about sending cold emails!
Raise your hand if you absolutely loathe sending emails? Raise your other hand if you especially hate cold-emailing people you’ve never met?
If you have both of your hands in the air, I bet you probably look pretty silly.
But I can tell you that I’ve been where you are, and just the thought of sending any kind of email (especially to a large audience or to someone I don’t know) gives me a little bit of anxiety.
I can also tell you that, like most things, it gets better with practice.
In this post, I’m sharing a few tips for how to make you a cold-emailing pro.
“Back to school” hits different when you’re a final year grad student…
Did you know that a common side-effect of being a PhD candidate is time blindness?
Okay, I don’t know that for sure, but I have been in this boat for a while. When you’re not teaching or taking classes, the days and weeks really start to blur together. Is it Monday? Thursday? Sunday?
The only way I keep track these days is by scheduling meetings, planning events, or being reminded that a new episode of a TV show I’m watching is on.
Usually, not knowing what day of the week it is isn’t that big of a problem. All I really need to know is whether it’s a weekday or the weekend, so I can decide whether I should be working or not.
Occasionally, I find it important to be aware of the beginning and end of the academic term. As a graduate student this helps me determine how frequently I should be in contact with my advisor and committee (more during the academic year, less in the summer). Right now, it’s also useful for deciding when to schedule my thesis defense (y i k e s).
As the person who’s running this blog, knowing when classes start is important for deciding when to get this post out.
After a nearly four-month break, I thought this was an easy way to get back into blogging.
If something feels super overwhelming, break it into small, easy steps. First step to reviving the blog? Make a round-up (or two, or three).
This month’s theme is back-to-school.
As it turns out, I’ve written a lot about pedagogy. So, I figured I’d put all those posts in one place, for folks who want to check them out before term starts.
If you’re an archaeologist, the fact that you spend your summers working in a foreign country has probably often been (mis)interpreted as a leisurely vacation.
Don’t get me wrong – working in Greece for four to eight weeks of the year *is* something I am privileged to be able to experience. But it’s still work. And working five or six days a week in the heat of the day takes its toll, mentally and physically, after a while.
Many people have already recognized this, and schedule in a vacation at some point during their trip. I, on the other hand, have been coming to Greece for six summers and have not once taken any time to myself.
This year, however, I had a little extra time in Athens and thought, “Hey, what the hell? No time like the present.”
This month I’m talking about the relationship between being an ally, accomplice, and co-conspirator. This relationship, I argue, is a cyclical one – allyship is just the first stage.
