"Unlike pain, sickness is not always negotiable."

I love my co-workers. I absolutely adore them (except for those times when they drive me insane. Which happens a lot. Which happens, Alot. )

The thing is, most of them are male, which has given me an interesting perspective on male/female gender dynamics in, to use the colloquial hipness of the time "a STEM field." Archaeology is a field-based science. I was going to qualify that sentence, but all physical archaeological evidence ever collected had to come from somewhere, and that "somewhere" was probably more "the middle of nowhere, under a bunch of dirt." The point is, it forces you to interact with nature, which in many ways requires you to strip off all the bullshit and just go out there and do some good science.  Science that will probably eventually also involve some amount of alcohol (but if you don't drink, that's totally cool. It's awesome having sober people around because then they can call you on your drunk shit. As scientists, I assume we all understand the importance of a good baseline and as anthropologists we should also recognize that our sober behaviors tend towards the "drunk shit" of many people.)

That wasn't the point at all. I was going to talk about gender dynamics. That'll have to wait, because I've already taken far too long writing this and should really be doing my organic chemistry. 

Be Seeing You

P.S. I got rejected from the Mercyhurst program, so I won't be moving to Erie, PA any time soon.