Transcript
Speaker: You're listening to the Archaeology Podcast Network.
Speaker: Welcome to episode 62 of a life ruins podcast, reinvesting the careers of those living life in ruins. I'm your host Carlton Gover, and I'm joined by my co -host Connor John and David Howe. In this episode, we are pleased to have Carson Black returned to the show. Carson first joined us way back on episode 17 to talk about primatology and the beginnings of her master's thesis research. We are very excited to announce that Carson recently graduated with her master's degree and are happy to have her back on to talk about her thesis research and her
Speaker: continuation into a doctoral program. So, congrats, congrats, congrats are in order, Carson. How do you feel now that you have the MA? It's actually, it's an MS, but I feel... Now, Ms. Chris, MS, how do you feel to have the MS? It's good. It's a huge relief. It's been an exceptionally difficult couple of years, but I'm happy to be done. It was a good experience, but I'm glad it's over with.
Speaker: Do you feel more secure about yourself saying, I have a master of science than a master of arts because I'm insecure about it for sure? Not really. I know that's like a thing between like different programs. And I also, I have a BA in anthropology, despite doing a lot of biology and a lot of lab work when I was in undergrad. So I'm, I am going to toot my own horn a little bit and say it's a master's of science.
Speaker: go for it. Yeah. Cause it's like I have, I'm a scientist and my Instagram says that I'm a little thing, but I have a bachelor of arts and a master of arts. I feel weird, but it's weird how they determine what is your podcast.
Speaker: Yeah. I don't know how that works actually. My understanding, it's just a language requirement. Cause I have a BS in anthro. And then when I got to Wyoming for my MA there, Bob was at Carlton. You need to take a Spanish in order to get the masters of arts. And, uh, that's all I know is the difference between a master's of arts and masters of science is I have a basic understanding of Spanish and I can get you to the Biblioteca.
Speaker: See, no, I did the same thing though. I was hanging out with like 20 year olds as like a 26 year old taking like Spanish three or something like that. I'm the old man in the corner. Like I'm here. I'm getting my master's degree. So I don't know. I don't know. It sounds like your, your degree was a BS though, Carlton.
Speaker: to be real. Um, so, so Carson, obviously some things have happened since we had you last on. Yeah. I guess we'll start off. Uh, did you end up doing any field work for, uh, as part of your master's research? No, it was, I did finish on time and I defended and graduated on time.
Speaker: But fieldwork came to a grinding halt. I was kind of naively hoping last March because the last time I was on this show, it was like days before I was about to propose my thesis. And that was like days before the world turned on its axis.
Speaker: We were kind of hopeful that it would kind of like come and go and and that is not at all What happened is we have all witnessed the past year and a half and field work was a no -go I received funding from the university and they said if you try to take this money and use it for international travel we will take it away from you and
Speaker: So they were really hard on the no international travel, no field work. And not just for me, but even for friends and colleagues that were doing work at zoos or sanctuaries, I mean, everything was shut. So no field work. But you still got done in two years. So that's actually kind of incredible. Did you just do most of your classes remotely? Yeah.
Speaker: I assume you weren't doing it in person or anything like that. No, I, uh, I went home at the beginning of quarantine. I went back to Wyoming thinking again, like, Oh, this, this will be a quick thing. We'll ride it out. And that is not at all what happened. So I ended up staying in Wyoming for five or six months and came back out to do my last year here and establish pods with friends. But I was lucky in the sense that.
Speaker: People on my committee had connections to the site that I was going to be at, so I ended up working with an existing data set and ran all of the analysis start to finish. I just missed out on doing it myself, the collecting part. But that's awesome that you were able to work with an existing data set, that you were able to use a readily available data in order to
Speaker: finish your thesis and get out on time, where in many other instances in graduate school, you know, COVID has severely delayed students from graduating. And as my understanding, at least at Colorado, has created a funding nightmare.
Speaker: Oh yeah, I had reached out to someone at Boulder about their PhD program and she was so sweet and was like, yeah, funding is really rough right now, so I probably can't take a student this year or next year. A lot of universities got hit really hard. We have no incoming students this fall and we don't know about next fall. And they had to cut a lot of students off for the past five years. They're finally like, you should have been graduated by now. We apologize. Get out.
Speaker: It was a weird year for PhD applications in general. A lot of places were like, we may accept one student per subfield, but we don't really know yet. And a lot of places were like, we've been given our usual funding, but we've been given the choice to like bring in a new cohort or continue to fund our current cohorts a little bit more. I had only reached out to one university that was like guaranteed accepting the same amount of students that they always have and funding and so. Excellent.
Speaker: And you got in. Yeah. It was a really stressful couple of months though. But that's, that's, that's a, that speaks to your ability as a master's student and probably, and I imagine so your thesis research that in, you know, as, as those can attest to like getting into graduate school is hard enough. And then especially when the resources are far more strict and the opportunities are far more few that you're able to come out on top is definitely awesome. Thank you. I appreciate that.
Speaker: And so you did mention that you spent a couple months out in Douglass, Wyoming. Yeah. And last time we talked, you had mentioned that you were volunteering at a primate sanctuary. Was that correct? Yeah. So Chimpanzee Sanctuary Northwest is an accredited facility out here in Clellam, Washington, caring for 10 chimpanzees. And as part of my degree program, there's this wonderful agreement where
Speaker: students in the primate program can intern at the sanctuary for three quarters and then they become certified in captive primate care. And you get to watch feedings, you help with enrichment, you're mostly there to clean and it's wonderful. The people that are working there are fabulous and the chimps are fantastic. But because of COVID, I didn't get to finish like the in -person component of the certificate because as we saw like with the San Diego gorillas,
Speaker: that tested COVID positive at the zoo. It's very easily transmissible and very early on. The team out there was really concerned of the student body like students from the campus still coming out and working there and so we did not have any in -person
Speaker: anything the entire school year. We did a lot of side projects for them, though. The interns got together and we did magazine drives and fundraisers. We did this big brewery event and an art contest. And so we helped in other ways. And they're getting ready to bring six more chimps in this summer. So the family is growing. Awesome. So you can transmit COVID -19 from humans to chimps. And I guess I'm going to ask, does it affect them as fairly as humans?
Speaker: We would like to not find out. My understanding with the COVID gorillas, or not with the San Diego gorillas that got COVID, they were given one of those monoclonal treatments, I believe, and the whole troop made a full recovery.
Speaker: And none of our chimps tested positive, thankfully. They've been on bare bones staff for the past year, essentially. The thought there is that it can be very easily transmitted. Even working out there, they say like, if you have a cold, if you even have the sniffles, like cancel your shift, you can come in another day because we are just so genetically similar and their immune systems are not like ours. And so it's harder for them to bounce back from something like the common cold or COVID. And so to,
Speaker: to just, you know, take matters into our own hands and rather be safe than sorry. They've been operating on a very small staff since last March. What happened to the, and this sounds funny, but like the COVID gorillas, it sounds like a horror movie, but like I know they caught it somehow.
Speaker: I don't know if they ever found out definitively how they contracted it. The thought was that maybe there was a keeper or someone that came into contact with them that was asymptomatic. Cause when the gorilla started showing signs, that's when the zoo was like, oh no, we might have a problem here. But I can't speak to the details. I only remember hearing that they had had it and then they made a full recovery. I'm not sure if they did anything specific otherwise.
Speaker: Gotcha. Okay. Yeah. I remember seeing that on Google search for those who were listening.
Speaker: Google search and DM us. Um, I'd be interested to see how they, uh, they ultimately reacted because they're obviously social primates. They're very social. So I wonder how kind of reducing the interaction between the caretakers and the chimps really affected them. Or if it didn't, and if they just didn't, didn't give a crap and we're probably happier without us, it'd be, it'd be a cool study. Yeah, definitely. Someone should do that for their master's thesis out here.
Speaker: It looks like they vaccinated some of the, uh, Oh, interesting. I hadn't heard that yet. The government's going to track the gorillas now too. Um, was going to get five G signal next to the five G strong with us. If they're gonna, gonna waste the money to track us, why would they waste the money to track gorillas? Therefore just get the fricking vaccine.
Speaker: All right. Listen to science. So speaking of you are wearing a shirt that says pan or pawn, I guess we want to be Latin about it and then primate awareness network.
Speaker: Yeah, this is our student club out here. Okay. Do you want to talk about that? It was a hard year because we had to do everything virtually, but we had some success with Skype a scientist outreach initiatives. Again, we partnered with CS and W and did fundraising and brewery activities and stuff like that. It's, it's primate awareness network so that it spells pan, which is the genus for chimpanzees and bonobos. Awesome. Yeah, that's cool.
Speaker: Wait, hold up, hold up. Pan Chocolatides and Pan Peniscus. Nailed it. There we go. How was Skype a Scientist? How did that go? It could have been better. It was hard to coordinate and keep in touch with teachers adequately. And it was hard to kind of balance because we were trying to do it in small groups where people could present in pairs.
Speaker: It was just logistically, it was a mess of a year, but we did really well for a club. We also have this really amazing palm oil initiative that we're trying to implement and we are pushing the university to be a palm oil sustainable only campus in the next couple of years.
Speaker: Two things to unpack there. Let's first go back to Skype with Scientists. Now, were you primarily working with like elementary school kids or were you able to snag some of the more older, older kids to talk? We had a lot of youngsters from what I remember, like a couple kindergarten, first grade, I think maybe third grade or fifth grade tops.
Speaker: The last Skype a scientist I did was with an elementary school on Thermopolis and they were kindergartners. And that was the last one I did. Cause I just couldn't do it anymore. Cause that was doing Skype a scientist on like with all the kids on their own. God bless those teachers. Hashtag save the teachers. That was rough. And then the second thing, which is highly important. Why is this palm oil initiative a important and B how does it relate back to primates?
Speaker: Yeah, so this is a good question. Palm oil is this resource. It's like really, it's really, really heavily extracted and it's primarily found in habitats of orangutans.
Speaker: And it's in everything. That's the problem. It's in sodas, breads. I mean, look in your shower and just look at your shampoo bottle. It probably has palm oil or some other like very fine oil in it. The extraction methods are really harmful to the environment in part because of deforestation.
Speaker: and you're also destroying all this habitat. But the issues with palm oil is that you can't just come in and say, okay, no more palm oil, find something artificial to replace it with and leave it at that. Because palm oil is also a really important resource for certain families across the globe. Mining it and working and extracting it keeps food on the table and a roof over their heads. And so the push to be,
Speaker: a sustainable palm oil campus. I don't know the exact details of the differences between palm oil and sustainable palm oil, but the sustainable is obviously a little bit more environmentally friendly. I think the extraction, the sustainability side of it, I think really puts the people first. And so it's not those big companies that are running the show and calling all the shots. But it's harmful in primate habitats, especially for the orangutans
Speaker: And so trying to be more sustainable and eco -friendly, there's only a couple universities that are even trying out this model. And so far we've got like all the permissions and the permits are in order. And we did a lot of work with the inventory lists that the university gave us. And so we literally went through everything that the university purchases food and drink wise and did research to find, is it
Speaker: Is there palm oil in it? Is it sustainable? Is it registered with this company? It's been a huge success and we won an award for it. The club came away with an award at the end of the school year. That's amazing. A really powerful, I think, advertisement I think I saw. It's kind of a poem you could find on YouTube. It's like there's an orangutan in my bedroom. Yes. It starts off with a little girl coming into her bedroom. There's orangutan making a mess and she's finally in a British accent like,
Speaker: you know, why are you here? And then it goes to like a non flashback from the orangutans perspective. And it's like, there's humans in my forest and it goes black and white and just, it's deep stuff. Yeah. And I want to add the red ape documentary is also really powerful. We watched that in one of our anthro classes kind of shows the process of the, of, of destroying this habitat and how it affects orangutans. So I would recommend that. And on that super somber note, I think we're going to end this segment and we'll catch you in segment two.
Speaker: Welcome back to episode 62 of a Life Nerds podcast. We're interviewing Carson Black for the second time, our good friend from Wyoming, I guess is where we met you. But you went off to Washington to do your thesis research primatology. Can you enlighten us as to what that was? I guess the audience as well.
Speaker: Yeah, so my thesis looks at what factors of fragmentation are influencing the howler monkey gut microbiome at a highly fragmented site in northeastern Argentina. Howlers are a really great model for studying the microbiome and like the related health effects of it because they are
Speaker: They're deemed lazy primates, but they're so important for ecosystems and they're really crucial for forest regeneration and they're easy to study. And so they're easy to track, they're easy to stick with, they're easy to collect data on, and they sometimes act as sentinels of ecosystem health so we can detect outbreaks in them before anything jumps to humans, which as we have seen is really important to understand in an ever -changing global system.
Speaker: Yeah. Fragmentation, you're referring to kind of changing of rainforest areas and maybe death and renewal of some areas. Yeah. Like roads are really big in fragmenting forests, right? Yes. Roads, lots of agriculture specifically in Argentina. There's been a lot of land clearing for
Speaker: cattle production, Argentina is big in the beef industry, as well as various other globally demanded crops, your bananas, all your fruits. And at my site in particular, I say my site, I didn't even get to go. It's experienced a lot of selective clear cut logging around the entire station. And so it's highly, highly fragmented. I wish I could show a map right now, but it
Speaker: It's, I mean, groups are entirely separated from each other and, and primarily because of roads and the agriculture around, but it's fragmentation is like the literal like pulling apart and destruction of natural habitats that are then kind of, they form like little forest pockets. And so you can have like one fragment in one area and another fragment in another, and it's separated by human altered land cover.
Speaker: And I guess for the non primate, and I guess interested non -primate inclined audience. There we go. The non, the non Simeons. Howlers are alawata, right? Is that the genus? Okay. So they, they're like the ones you would find like around the Maya and that's like in Mexico and jungles and stuff like that too. Right. Okay. Gee, I wonder, they are, they are the loudest animal on the planet. They could rupture a grown man's eardrum. If.
Speaker: they were to like howl right in your ear. Really? Yeah. Like louder than like a whale or something? Yes. That's cool. Hence why they're so easy to track.
Speaker: I don't know if you can measure whales and howler monkeys in the same sort of venue. I think there's a different medium that they're moving through. I just imagine someone pulling a whale out of the ocean and putting a microphone up to it and then someone taking a howler monkey and just dunking it in a bathtub.
Speaker: All right, moving past it. Anyway, I was just trying to get the audience familiar with what we're talking about, but they are a like, they have a big long tail. They do swing from trees kind of monkeys. Yeah, they have a prehensile tail, so it acts as like a fifth limb and they're known to like hang from this prehensile tail in like their feeding time. And infants, baby howlers will like dangle from their tail and like
Speaker: wind themselves up really tight and then let themselves go like kids on a swing set. It's really funny to watch, but they have the largest geographic range of the tropical primates. So they extend all the way from Mexico down through the northeastern part of Argentina. And that's why they're such like a huge proxy. Yeah. You're saying because they're so ubiquitous.
Speaker: Cool and very flexible. They're really resilient. That was something I really emphasized in my thesis was this this uncanny ability to be resilient in the face of mass forest destruction. They are still thriving for the most part. They they adapt really well in large part due to the really tough
Speaker: And that segues nicely into microbiomes and what the microbiome is. So the easiest way I can put it is the microbiome, and there's lots of different microbiomes, but it's the assemblage of all the microbiota, all your microbes. So it's bacteria, fungi, viruses, protozoa, and
Speaker: they make up all these various body niches. So, I mean, your skin has a microbiome, your gut's got a microbiome, and these are seen in all living things, animals, humans, and there's even recent research suggesting that the environment in soils have microbiomes.
Speaker: And so I was trying to make a connection between increases in forest fragmentation, like what are we going to see downstream at the microbial level from these massive impacts that we can see at a really big global scale. And I looked specifically at the gut microbiome because it's easy to look at. You take fecal samples, you preserve them in ethanol, and then you can do all your sequencing with 16S ribosomal data.
Speaker: How do you collect fecal samples from like tree swinging primates? Are you down there with like a giant Tupperware container following them all day? You know, I can't answer it because I didn't get to do my own field work.
Speaker: I do know I have a friend who worked with a free ranging orangutans and he was collecting urine and like just held an inverted umbrella to catch it. So I imagine fecal samples are maybe a little bit easier. A Life and Roads podcast. The secrets of science revealed.
Speaker: Interesting. Okay. Yeah. Cause I'd imagine they just found it on like the forest floor, but I guess then it's contaminated or something. Well, that's the thing. You gotta be quick. So when you're tracking a group, you gotta get it like immediately so that it's not too contaminated. You don't want bugs. You don't want like extra environmental things if that's not what you're measuring. And there's like some interesting relationships between dung beetles and howler monkeys in at other sites. So, okay.
Speaker: So this is going to be like a really crappy question. Pun intended. Pun intended. Is there like a time during the day where it's your data collection might increase significantly, say when hell or monkeys wake up in the morning? Yes. You nailed it. Yep. First thing in the morning and they will often sleep. They will often, they will often like sleep and defecate at the same tree sites.
Speaker: It sounds a lot like my 2020, but anyway. I thought you were gonna say sleep and defecate at the same time. And I was like, oh my God. That's why that was wrong. Before we continue on the. I'm so sorry. I'm sorry with the Tupperware comment and we just kept going. This is fascinating stuff. This has to happen though. We're talking about poop science. Like you gotta have the right joke. So I respect it. We gotta keep people interested. Yeah, there you go.
Speaker: I have cut – this is gonna – it's a weird segue but I have cut open human bodies and I have cut open animal bodies at Tennessee during my undergrad. My girlfriend at the time was doing like samples on gorilla feces for her, I think, ecology project.
Speaker: I would much prefer to stick my head inside a dead deer and or human than smell two week old gorilla poop. It was the worst thing I've ever smelled. Um, so I don't know if you got to work with samples at all, but it was, I did not get to do any of like the physical.
Speaker: processing and handling of the fecal samples in the lab. It was a 2017, oh my God, I've been looking at this project for way too long. I don't even remember now. It was a 2017 data set. And so everything had already been processed and analyzed in the lab. But the professor that was sitting on my committee, she's like the primate gut microbiome person. And I love her tremendously. She's fabulous. But when we were discussing like what data set to give me
Speaker: She's like, you know, I could like make this easy and send you everything like as it is because it's already been sequenced and I could just like give you the sets so that you can immediately start doing your stats. She's like, but that wouldn't be any fun. And the mentor in me says otherwise. So I got to like do all the command line bioinformatics coding on my samples and sequence the DNA and like see it happening. It was really cool. And I ended up really liking the bioinformatics part of it. So I'm hoping to expand on that.
Speaker: in my PhD. My next question with that was going to be like how, like in essence, did you get the data to work with? So I guess you kind of answered that right there. Cool. So we shared through like a cloud sharing ability so that I had access to them. She had access to them. And I just, I moved them around using this cool thing called cyber duck and just pulled everything and was working on the command line, which I had never done before. It's wildly intimidating.
Speaker: Yeah, it's like a website. Nice. So there's like an element of programming involved as well? Yeah, and a big learning curve. So there's obviously an element of time to what you're studying. Did you have two different samples that you were comparing and what were the time periods in between them?
Speaker: Oh, no, I had like 50 some samples. I think the tally ended up being 53 total that we need sequenced and compared and ran stats on. Yeah, and so I had to like extract all the DNA information first using the command line and I had to like send the sequencing
Speaker: command off to my university's supercomputing cluster. So I was like remoting in running code and sending it, sending the job to the supercomputer. And then I'd get the information back and would like extract information and tables and stuff from there and then ran everything in R. Wow. R is a lot of intimidating. R is so intimidating. Yeah. Yeah. Fun when you get the hang of it, but also a very big learning curve.
Speaker: I wouldn't be able to say because I never got the hang of it. You had a bunch of different samples. Is there like, because you wanted to compare them, do you have like an existing data set that you were comparing them to? And what was the time period in between, you know, the two samples to ultimately get your comparison?
Speaker: So we worked with just one data set and we were just comparing like groups within that data set against each other. And I don't even know the group number off the top of my head, but we were comparing things like between groups based on certain factors that we had set and parameters that we agreed on. Yeah. So imagine like when you're dealing with fragmentation and how these howler monkeys are responding to environmental like stress, the populations that you were using to compare
Speaker: I mean, I imagine geography was a part of it, right? Like there were different populations of howler monkeys in different parts of the forest that had different proximity to human induced reputation. Okay. There's been, and this site has been really well established for several decades. Dr. Martin Kowalewski is the one who runs it. He's like the primary field investigator. He's wonderful to work with. He came to my defense and I was outrageously honored. I couldn't believe it.
Speaker: and he's been running this site for a very long time and there's been a lot of health research and a lot of gut stuff to come out of these howlers and so it's I mean these groups have been really well monitored for a really long time they have a lot of family history they have a lot of information on these monkeys and so it's I mean my dataset was just one like tiny thing compared to this wide array of things they've done and it's
Speaker: It's cool research. It's a cool site, but it was a hard year in part because I didn't get to go do my own field collection. But then as I was coming back to Washington at the end of August, the site burned. So in late August, early September, a fire came through. The thought is that people were trying to clear land for cattle and it was Argentina's hottest year on record in nearly a decade.
Speaker: Climate change kind of fueled these fires and as we saw like with the Pacific Northwest last fall too in California, Wyoming, Colorado I mean it's fire is not to be Messed with and it should be taken seriously in the context of climate change So half the site burned early on in the fall and then another fire came through a month or so later and at the time it was
Speaker: right as the fall quarter was kicking in again, I was trying to kind of figure out what we were going to do with data. And they estimated at the time that only 10 % of the park hadn't been burned. And there were several howler groups that were unaccounted for. And although Dr. Kowalewski in my defense told everybody that most of the groups that I had sampled and that I had used for my project were accounted for. So
Speaker: But it was a really devastating year. Yeah. I think all around. Yeah. That's brutal. Yeah. It was hard. And then I grappled with, well, how do I do this site justice? Because I felt almost guilty using this existing data set and was like, this feels wrong to be asking questions about monkeys at a site that might not even be there anymore.
Speaker: But what I ended up researching kind of segued nicely into what their current efforts are down there and in monitoring like post -fire regrowth and how howler monkeys are so resilient. They're some of the first species to come back after a devastation. So tracking those groups as they come back and monitoring new babies, new groups. So yeah, it was a rough year for this thesis.
Speaker: In the end though, you had just mentioned defense. I guess, can you define for the audience what a defense is? And then, you know, what was your experience with that? I remember mine being extremely relieving. Yeah, mine was too. Um, so I actually did two defenses kind of your first year in this program, they have you do a thesis proposal defense. And so you present the thesis like with your lit review and your proposed methods and
Speaker: It's more of a formality to do it for the proposals. The big show that I just recently did a couple of weeks ago, it's much more professional. It's really a time to be like, look, this is what I did. This is exactly how I did it. And you defend in front of your committee.
Speaker: that has worked very closely with you on a project and and has seen various drafts upon drafts of it and and it's a time to like present and and say yeah look at what I did look at look at these howler monkeys and how cool they are and my defense was actually a lot of fun I was nervous obviously going into it because anytime you're like presenting something that you did on your own I think it's a little like
Speaker: Oh man, yeah, I did all of this. And suddenly I was second guessing. I was like, do I even know what my stats mean? Did I even run the pipeline? Who knows? And it all ended up totally okay. Just like everybody said it would. It was fun for me because it was on Zoom, which I think is such a testament to how this year has been.
Speaker: But it was cool because all of my parents were there, my grandparents, aunts and uncles. I had cousins in England tuning in with like little glasses of wine because it was dinnertime across the pond. And Todd Surivelle came. I mean, it was just like all these people that I love and respect and admire so much. Friends and professors, I mean, everybody came. And so it didn't feel like
Speaker: There was a lot of pressure riding on it. It felt more like, I'm giving a very fancy presentation to everybody I love about what I do. And that kind of took the edge off for me, but I don't remember the defense. I remember starting it and I remember ending it. Everything in between is a blur. I just had to like pick up my guts and go.
Speaker: Yeah. And I'm glad there's a silver lining there for you for it to be, uh, you know, all those people got to come and they probably couldn't have flown out to see it. Yeah, exactly. It was in person. It was fun. And I slept like a rock after it was done. Good. Yeah. I tell when I present, you like start talking and then you just black out and then you're like, all right, that's over. And in like that situation, this session is over. I don't know what I said and we'll come back in the next one.
Speaker: Welcome back to episode 62 of a life in ruins podcast, talking with Carson black about primatology and other crap, so to speak.
Speaker: We wanted to plug in the future, there is going to be an article with all her conclusions from her research and it'll be coming out at some point. We'll have it on our social media and share it when it does come out. But we wanted to kind of transition to talking about your experiences at Central Washington University and what are kind of some of the big things that you took away from grad school.
Speaker: Oh man, well first and foremost, lean on your people. I discovered really quickly that people make the experience and I've found some really remarkable friendships that I really cherish out here.
Speaker: I'm aching having to leave this state already. And also a good thesis is a finished thesis. It does not have to be perfect. And I had to kind of coach myself about that and be like, it's going to be done. It's going to be turned in. And that's all you have to do. It does not have to be a perfect five star, like ready for publication out of the gate thesis.
Speaker: And since we were just talking about stats and R, I'm learning very quickly that it's always good to be learning stats and just be on top of the tests you run and what they mean. I am still working on this. I am preaching to my own choir here.
Speaker: And also that breaks are okay. This was not something I think that was emphasized as heavily as an undergrad, but your mental health and academia should be nourished and cherished. And so taking a break when you need it is okay and should be welcomed and celebrated rather than thinking, oh, I'm so lazy. I have so much to do. No, you need a break. You're allowed to give yourself some rest. You've earned it. I think all three of us would agree with that pretty wholeheartedly.
Speaker: Yeah. As Carlton says it with a faded look on his face. I'm almost done, man. I can see the finish line. I just need to crawl in my hands and knees. I was saying to my advisor in the weeks leading up to my defense that the light at the end of the tunnel was a train. Yep. You know what? That was that I've never heard something more accurate. My tag at McDonald's is going to say doctor assistant manager.
Speaker: I did want to mention just because we talked about R, I think we always get questions about what people should study and what skills they should learn. I think R is huge.
Speaker: R is so huge. And there's other statistical programs. R is not like the end all be all by any means. I mean, there's, there's SPSS, there's Java, Python. I mean, there's so much you can do depending on what kind of data and what kind of stats you want to run. But I think R, at least like RStudio is a little bit more user friendly. And there's like wide open forums on Google with R stuff.
Speaker: I mean, people are just creating packages for funsies. There's people out there, there's grad students out there that are plugging in packages and writing code and transcripts, and I will not ever be one of those people, but I like running the code.
Speaker: But yeah, R is super important, and I wish I had exposed myself to more stats earlier on in my career because I was stressing doing my data analysis. I felt like I was flying blind. I was lucky I had a lot of help from my professors, but it was not a pretty start. SPSS is what the devil's demi devans use to keep track of all the torturing and hell. My advisor would say otherwise. She loves SPSS.
Speaker: Oh, that's what I learned in RStudio for me. Then I switched to R. I get a lot of DMs about like, you know, what classes should I take? And you know, yada, yada. To those people that ask me that, I would say now that Carson has brought it up, if you can take in your undergrad and in grad school, if you can.
Speaker: a coding or a programming class that will infinitely help you do science later on. And that way when you're doing your thesis, like Carson and I, yeah. You're not scrambling. You're not also trying to learn that. You're not running around like a chicken with its head cut off, crying over your stats. Yeah, precisely. And to the point where you don't understand it enough that Dr. Randy Haas is like, I got it.
Speaker: But anyway, we'll continue on. Dude, Eric Robinson made me cry in his office and having me work out the code for my thesis. And he just would not give me the code. He was just like, no, you'll learn. And I learned, I learned those seven lines of code. Thank you, Dr. Robinson. Hit like three buttons and then it was, it was fine. Yeah, that's huge. I mean, and for those stats, okay, moving on.
Speaker: I was going to say, so R is an open source program that you can do a bunch of different crazy stuff in. So those aren't that are not aware of and it's, it's free, right? I think it's, so go check that out. Kind of moving on. Did you ever have any difficulties with like, you know, getting financed or, you know, getting your research on track to graduate?
Speaker: Not entirely. I learned very quickly. Grants are hard. Grant writing is very tough. No two grants are the same and formatting is a pain in the neck. But I think if anything, I just struggled with what to do with finances because my field work was canceled.
Speaker: And so I had to kind of get creative with how to use the money. I was like, okay, we paid for like this cloud service and we did this, this and this, but I did learn pretty quickly that like funding and research support is very, very competitive, especially like with larger.
Speaker: like the NIH grants or the NSF grants, NSF GRFP, that's the graduate student NSF grant. And it's hard. I mean, it takes practice and even like great grant writers have a hard time, you know, securing funding year after year after year. But, and even like as a master's student, you're not typically funded, but I had an assistantship, so that helped a little bit too.
Speaker: All of us had one, right? At some point. I was fully funded today, set foot at Wyoming. That's right. Cause that injured blood. All right.
Speaker: But what I was going to say with that before that outburst was if you are going into grad school, you may not get fully funded immediately, but there are like pools of funding eventually where you know, if you're a good student and you like, not that you behave yourself, but you don't like, you know, mess up. Yeah. You can either become like a teaching assistant or a research assistant. Connor and I were both the curational assistant at one point and it's fun. It's experience.
Speaker: Yeah, these are good questions to ask potential advisors and things like that. There's different avenues for funding. Like David mentioned, there's, you know, working with, at Wyoming, it was working with curation. You could work at a state historic preservation office. Yes, there's lots of opportunities, and those are really, really good questions to ask, you know, folks going into advisors or anything like that.
Speaker: Yeah and if you're also if you're going to apply to programs and stuff it's good to ask the professors that when you're looking around for schools but also like that when you visit the school or if you know of people that go there talk to the students about the culture and how that works and what their experience with the assistantships are because it could be you know a terrible situation it could be a great situation so speaking of terrible and great
Speaker: Carson, how overall was your graduate experience? Because I could say had some of my favorite days of my life in grad school, but then I could also say I had some of the worst. Yeah, I concur with that statement. I absolutely agree. And it was a weird year too, because I was like living at home for six months because of the pandemic. So I missed out on half a year living in Washington anyway. And we only had like a, we only had a few months on campus.
Speaker: before everything hit the fan. So I had kind of an unconventional experience, I would say. But even despite that, I would agree. I've had some of the absolute best moments of my life living here and being in this program. And I've made a lot of great connections and I'm coming away with a lot of tools in my toolbox, if you will. But yeah, it's also, it's been a really grueling two years. I mean, it's,
Speaker: I remember being on the phone with my advisor once and being like, does anything ever work out with a thesis? Like, does anything ever go the way you plan it to? And she was like, no, this is science. But she was great. I had a really wonderful, supportive advisor. I had a really wonderful, supportive committee, but my advisor changed my life. And it's been a really good experience out here. I'm glad to hear it. Absolutely. What has been your fondest memory of graduate school?
Speaker: Oh my gosh, there's so many good ones. There was my birthday party this year, there was my defense, but I would say, I think if I had to pick one, I would say last October, I liked these friends I was making. I liked these people so much that I let them talk me into going camping, like in a tent in the middle of October, in the middle of a forest in Washington state.
Speaker: And if you know Washington weather, it's not like the middle of October is the warmest time of year, the best time of year to go tent camping. But we loaded up the car and we went and pitched our tents and did Leavenworth Oktoberfest last year. And it was just the most fun. We only went for two days and one night, but we hyped and we drank beer and we ate good bratwurst. And it was just, it was such a,
Speaker: It was such a fun experience because I had never done anything like that and it was just it was such a fun, fun memory even though I am convinced I nearly lost my toes that night.
Speaker: Yeah. It sounds like off the cuff camping trips are pretty common in grad school. Very much so. Connor took me out in February in Wyoming. Oh, that's even worse. Yeah. We didn't end up spending the whole day. The people that were at the same campsite were like in campers with like the lights strung up, you know, and they like drove up past us and they're like, are you seriously camping in tents tonight? And we were like, yeah, we're all like all excited, bright eyed and bushy tailed. And they were like, yeah, good luck.
Speaker: It was very chilly that night. Yeah. Yeah. David and I almost died in a, in a cave that we thought we were going to stay in, in Vadavu in, I think it was January or something stupid. Yeah. My birthday's in February, so it was, there was snow falling and it was the mountains of Wyoming and we decided to go camping for some reason. Say no more. But it was also a great experience, but wouldn't recommend it.
Speaker: So you also applied to a PhD program during this time. I applied to three. So how did that experience go, especially trying to finish a thesis and all that kind of stuff at the same time? Oh my gosh. First of all, whoever decided that
Speaker: Grad school applications are to be due at the same time as finals week and like the end of quarters and semesters. That was a bad idea. It was really stressful trying to wrap up my fall quarter and like coordinate flights home. And I mean, there was COVID like really awful COVID numbers at that time. And dang.
Speaker: So it was just like one thing on top of another. And out of all the applications, except for one, I mean, there was no guarantee that there was going to even be funding. And I had really good relationships with all of the advisors that I was applying to work with. They're all three brilliant, badass women. And I would have thrived
Speaker: under any of their advisement. But yeah, it was, it was a strange year for applications. I had a lot of friends that applied and didn't get in just because of how messy funding was depending on which university you were applying to work with. And, and primatology already, I think even anthropology more broadly is so specific and so small that like any spots and positions are really competitive and really limited.
Speaker: So it was an emotional roller coaster, needless to say. Yeah. All of that, like, cause you're, first off, writing your thesis is one, finishing it, defending it, and then also applying to grads. That's like a whole thesis in itself. Cause you got to write letters of intent and you got to fill out a lot of stuff. You got to do your GRE and then you had a pandemic. Carson, I applaud the shit out of you cause that is a lot of work.
Speaker: Yeah, I would have cried. Oh, I did. Many times. Cool. I'm glad it wasn't just me. No, not just you. So many panicked phone calls to my advisor and my mother and just like, I can't do it. I can't finish. And it feels like that. I think pandemic or not, there reaches a point where you're like, I can't do it all. I'm not going to make it. And then somehow it's done and it's over with.
Speaker: And you never got COVID, I guess. You told us so. I was lucky. And I also got vaccinated. Wink, wink, nudge, nudge, everybody. Nice. I think we're all vaccinated here too.
Speaker: I was going to say, come on guys, help me out here. Do you, um, do you have any, not that you have any last words that would be ominous. Do you have any final thoughts for the, uh, for the audience? Sorry, I can't speak today. Like more and more specifically, if there was one, a couple, like one or two pieces of wisdom that you'd pass on anyone seeking to go to graduate school.
Speaker: Mental check -ins are good. Counseling is okay. I went back to counseling this year in part because of the pandemic and also in part because academia is hard and it can weigh you down. And so checking in with yourself is okay and should be welcomed and celebrated again. But I would also say like, if you really, really, really wanna do something pandemic or not, like just make it happen.
Speaker: I love what I do and it's been a really hard couple of years and there's been a lot of moments where I was like, what happens if I don't get into a PhD program? What happens if I have to move home again? What happens if I stay in Washington instead? And so I think like perseverance and it sounds so cheesy, but I like to think of myself as resilient like my howler monkeys.
Speaker: Cause I did it. It was not easy. I'm proud of myself and I'm proud of my cohort and we will persist. I love therapy. I've been going. Why would you like it? I have a PhD program and it is the best thing on the planet. Now that I've been in it, I have - I always survived last year without it. Yeah. I got back into it in large part because of pandemic anxiety and I won't go into my PhD without it now.
Speaker: I just always want to be able to fall back on it and do check -ins. And I think the stigma behind it is being unpacked a little bit more. But in academia, I think mental health is so, so crucial. And taking care of that should be celebrated. Absolutely. Yeah. Yeah. Wise words from Carson Black. I think we'd all agree with that. 100%. So Carson, before we end the show today, what are a couple sources that you'd recommend for anyone interested in primatology or howler monkeys?
Speaker: Oh man, Wisconsin, University of Wisconsin has a great network and sources for people looking for field work or job positions. Think of books, anything by Jane Goodall. Gosh, what a loaded question. I could just go on and on and on. John Flegel's Primate Adaptation and Evolution, third edition, it's my Bible.
Speaker: Unfortunately, David has imposed a ban on Jane Goodall books. Oh, yeah. I forgot about this. Oh, my gosh. I can't believe I agreed to do this again, David. Damn it. Strike that from the record. I'm going to DM slide Jane Goodall and just show you guys that we're friends.
Speaker: We are not proud of her for winning another award. We don't enjoy any of her success. So that's the official Stance of a Life in Ruins podcast. No, that's David Stance. That's David Stance. This is specifically David. David's got beef with Jane Goodall. I don't know. She's a little shady. I'm just kidding. Carson, not to put you on the spot, but she's a wonderful, wonderful human being.
Speaker: If you can't think of anything, like all of them right now, just shoot us like a text or an email and throw them into the show notes. They will be down below for our listeners, all of Carson's recommendations. You can find them. And we can also, I'd love to do another collaboration post with you at some point. Speaking of, where can our listeners find you on social media? I'm on Instagram and I'm on Twitter. And I think you guys may have my handles already.
Speaker: Can you say them for the audience? So Twitter is just at Carson black and Instagram is at cars black underscore. Okay. I'm on LinkedIn too, but I still don't really know how to do it. LinkedIn is, have you made an academia profile yet on LinkedIn? No academia .edu. Have you made one of those profiles? Oh, I didn't know that that was a thing.
Speaker: Yeah, I still haven't done mine either. Does it matter? Good to know. If you don't, if you don't have it done yet, I certainly don't need to have it done yet. Yeah. My, my LinkedIn profile is still like my fraternity portrait from my undergraduate where it's like, it has not been, I'm going to find Carlton right now.
Speaker: All right. Yeah. And we, so we just interviewed Carson Black. You can find her on Instagram at, at cars black underscore and that Twitter at, at Carson Black. You can find all those in our show notes down below. Please be sure to rate and review the podcast, provide us with some feedback wherever you can on Apple, Spotify, even comment on our Instagram. Just say you don't like us. It just, it's, it helps the algorithm even if you don't like us.
Speaker: Let us know. Emails help, but it's more better if you do it on the platforms. Yeah, there we go. My great master's degree words here. Bottom line is, please be sure to rate and review the podcast. Three and a half stars? Just two stars is fine. Just get us somewhere. All right. And with that, we are out.
Speaker: Thanks for listening to a life in ruins podcast. You can follow us on Instagram and Facebook at a life in ruins podcast. And you can also email us at a life in ruins podcast at gmail .com. And remember, make sure to bring your archeologists in from the cold and feed them beer. So the power outage at the zoo's primate exhibit was caused by a stereo. Someone used it to play rage against the machine. Lights out. Dorello radio. Turn that shit up. I don't get it.
Speaker: Lights out, Perilla Radio. It was caused by a stereo in the primate exhibit. Hashtag Remember Harambe. Alright, and we're done.
Speaker: This episode was produced by Chris Webster from his RV Traveling America, Tristan Boyle in Scotland, and the Archaeology Podcast Network, and was edited by Chris Webster. This has been a presentation of the Archaeology Podcast Network. Visit us on the web for show notes and other podcasts at www .archpodnet .com. Contact us at chrisatarchaeologypodcastnetwork .com.
