Saving the world archaeologically
Oct. 15th, 2006 09:31 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
theyellowhobbitOn Friday morning I decided to write Ben an e-mail on my progress or lack thereof. While I was writing the e-mail, I came upon a problem. Ben wants me to define a methodology for studying the archaeology of purity, since such a methodology does not exist, as far as I know. But I didn't know how to write a a methodology.
In our Monday meeting we had talked about this a little bit, but it was Friday and my memory of it wasn't so clear. I had a bunch of notes, though. So I decided to give him an outline that he could look at.
And then, of course, the outline ended up being bigger than my thesis outline. And all these things that I hadn't thought of before started coming out, and I was productive, and this all happened in a half-hour. I felt amazing afterwards, like I had accomplished something big. And then when I was talking to people and they asked "what did you do today?" I responded, "oh, not much. I just wrote a methodology for doing the archaeology of purity..." So I overexaggerated a little, since it's just an outline...
Though I was afraid that this might effect the direction of the thesis and that I would have to rework everything. I told Ben in the e-mail that I wasn't going to work on the [thesis] outline until I had feedback about the methodology, and that I didn't want to work on the intro until I knew about the outline. There would be no point in doing work if it was all in the wrong direction...
After chag I checked my e-mail, and lo and behold, there was an e-mail from Ben! And he thinks my outline is an excellent start, and will be "one of your thesis's unique contribution to scholarship, especially anthropological scholarship." Yeah. I'm special. If I can pull this off, and if I can get published, then maybe it'll help me get into grad school and make it so someday I'll be a tenured professor with my own excavation. Huzzah!
In our Monday meeting we had talked about this a little bit, but it was Friday and my memory of it wasn't so clear. I had a bunch of notes, though. So I decided to give him an outline that he could look at.
And then, of course, the outline ended up being bigger than my thesis outline. And all these things that I hadn't thought of before started coming out, and I was productive, and this all happened in a half-hour. I felt amazing afterwards, like I had accomplished something big. And then when I was talking to people and they asked "what did you do today?" I responded, "oh, not much. I just wrote a methodology for doing the archaeology of purity..." So I overexaggerated a little, since it's just an outline...
Though I was afraid that this might effect the direction of the thesis and that I would have to rework everything. I told Ben in the e-mail that I wasn't going to work on the [thesis] outline until I had feedback about the methodology, and that I didn't want to work on the intro until I knew about the outline. There would be no point in doing work if it was all in the wrong direction...
After chag I checked my e-mail, and lo and behold, there was an e-mail from Ben! And he thinks my outline is an excellent start, and will be "one of your thesis's unique contribution to scholarship, especially anthropological scholarship." Yeah. I'm special. If I can pull this off, and if I can get published, then maybe it'll help me get into grad school and make it so someday I'll be a tenured professor with my own excavation. Huzzah!
