Become a Creator today!Start creating today - Share your story with the world!
Start for free
00:00:00
00:00:01
Sexy Sex with Asian Dothrakis - Episode 10
52 Plays11 years ago
IT’S EPISODE 10 OF THE STRUGGLING ARCHAEOLOGIST’S GUIDE TO GETTING DIRTY- “SEXY SEX WITH ASIAN DOTHRAKIS!”
Given, those of you who share my love of Medieval era earth-like fantasy novels will get more out of this one than others- it’s still a pretty great time. We talk about genome studies revealing how surprisingly horny our ancient ancestors were, which may or may not involve a detailed Game of Thrones analogy. Then I give some advice to the newb considering how to get started with academic conferences. Number 1 priority- ignore ANY and ALL impulses to dress like Indiana Jones. Do NOT do this thing. Repeat after me: I will NOT be that guy… breathe deep, it’s going to be okay.
Oh, and if you didn’t believe me that archaeology conferences are fun- check this out. Yeah, you try eating a pizza the size of a coffee table and not having fun.
Also, all that stuff about drinking was true. I’m not saying that some people are more successful than others at conferences because they drink delicious beers at the end of the day… but it helps.
Okay my nerds, always remember to drink responsibly, tip your waiters, and listen to more of The Struggling Archaeologist Podcast!
McNiven OUT!
Recommended
Transcript
00:00:04
Speaker
Yeah.
00:00:21
Speaker
Hey, everybody.
Introduction and Episode Overview
00:00:22
Speaker
Welcome back. It's the 10th episode of the Struggling Archaeologist's Guide to Getting Dirty. I'm your host, Jenny. I'm so excited that you're here with me today on our big number 10 to talk about things that are happening and exciting in the world of history and archaeology.
00:00:42
Speaker
I promise I will not talk about my dogs anymore today. I did it for like 35 minutes straight on the last episode, and I'm pretty sure you're puppyed out. So today we're going to get straight down to some news. And then later on in this segment, I've got some advice for you, you youngins starting out in the field from your Auntie Jenny, just some information to maybe help
Career Insights in Archaeology
00:01:09
Speaker
you be a little bit more comfortable and less intimidated by the big bad world of academics in archaeology. I know a lot of people get into the field because they just want to dig things up. And that's really fun. But if you actually pursued as a career, there is so much more that you have to understand and be responsible for
00:01:34
Speaker
in creating this academic persona for yourself out there in the world of professional anthropology. We're going to talk a little bit about that. First, a news story that I found extremely exciting and entertaining that I saw this week.
00:01:54
Speaker
Okay, so anyway, just our new story segments are not always something that's going to blow your mind and the biggest, most important things going on in the discipline right now. They're literally just at my discretion, so you know. I know there's archaeology websites and podcasts that have basically an
00:02:16
Speaker
a non-stop news ticker of every single thing that's coming out and that's really exciting. That's not what this podcast is about. There's lots of places you can go to get all that recent news. I love Twitter because if you
00:02:33
Speaker
want updated archaeology news, there are a lot of different websites and organizations you can follow like National Geographic, there's a lot of archaeology news blogs that post like literally 30 links a day to different archaeology stories and that stuff is really awesome and I follow them and it's great. And that's actually how I find a lot of these feature segments that I do.
00:03:00
Speaker
But yeah, just so you know, I like to keep up with everything that's going on, but I don't have the time to bring you every single story. We basically just talk about whatever I want to talk about, and I hope you're okay with that. It may be a little selfish, but that's just how I roll. If there's a certain topic or a new story you want to talk about, you can email me at guidetogettingdirty at gmail.com.
00:03:24
Speaker
You could message me on Facebook at the website or Facebook site for the podcast or message me on Tumblr at guidetogettingsdirty.tumblr.com or you could tweet me. I'm also on Twitter. I'm everywhere. I'm in your head.
00:03:41
Speaker
You can follow me at strugglingarc, A-R-C-H, at strugglingarc on Twitter. And you can send me a message there as well. I'm all over the internet, man. So just, you know, I'm here for you. So you just let me know and I will jump on that crap. I almost swore. Sorry, kids.
00:04:03
Speaker
Anyway, we're going to get started with our first segment of the evening.
Ancient Human Genetics
00:04:08
Speaker
It's news and goings on from around the spheroid. Yeah. And this is a story from nature.com. Nature is a great place to go for interesting stories coming out in all things science, nature, archaeology, all of those wonderful disciplines.
00:04:31
Speaker
And this one, I saw the title and I giggled a little bit and so I figured I'd check it out and that's why I'm talking about it today. It's called Mystery Human Spiced Up Ancient Sex Lives. Ooh. What a titillating title to what's your appetite for what's to come. So this piece is by Ewan Callaway and it's about a new study that was presented at the recent meeting on ancient DNA at the Royal Society of London.
00:05:01
Speaker
that's revealed that updated genome sequencing of two groups of our ancient relatives pretty much officially proves that we come from a long line of promiscuous hominins, basically like really hairy pimps and hoes. But seriously, you might not have stopped to consider that in the last 200,000 years of homo sapien development,
00:05:27
Speaker
Not only haven't we been the only people walking the earth on two legs, we were basically sitting at the kids' table for most of it. About 40,000 years ago, Homo sapiens were just one of the branches of the tree of homonoid evolution that spanned back up to about 8 million years ago. And through every point in that history, it's assumed there has been more than one group
00:05:54
Speaker
in existence at a time, and that their extinction or survival is the story that ends with us, basically. The lonely survivors in the long race to world domination!
00:06:10
Speaker
Right, so even though all of these ancestral lines may have failed to evolve into another species like our immediate ancestors did, the evidence of their relationships actually persists in the genes that they shared with the group that did survive. So apparently the differences between ancient groups weren't really so great that they would not consent to getting down and dirty with each other now and then
00:06:35
Speaker
So we know from Neanderthal sequencing especially that most modern humans with the exclusion of groups that have never left Africa or interbred with post-migration populations, they've actually got about 2% of their genome from Neanderthals that bred with Homo sapiens before they kicked the bucket.
00:06:56
Speaker
So, since we've been able to start better understanding the genomes of other ancients, it seems that the evidence of more than one archaic human group intermixing with our ancestors is evident in our DNA.
00:07:10
Speaker
So basically we knew that we were getting it on with Neanderthals, but now this new research is showing that there's actually more than just Neanderthal DNA in us. There's evidence of other groups of ancient hominids or archaic humans that also interbred with us before they disappeared and walked into the sunset forever.
00:07:34
Speaker
So yeah, but it's not really surprising seeing that modern humans have a relatively large amount of genetic diversity compared to many species that often reflects the immense distance between different populations geographically. So if archaic humans were living amongst different hominin groups in separate locations, then any interbreeding that they did would result in geographically distinct patterns of DNA
00:08:01
Speaker
which reflected the input of those different groups in different locations. And so I think that's really fascinating. I think we've talked about it a little bit before on the podcast, the idea of
00:08:15
Speaker
the multi-regional continuity theory of human evolution as related to the out of Africa theory. This kind of plays into that. So in the article, we hear from Harvard evolutionary geneticist David Reich and Svante Paabo of the Max Planck Institute, who along with their colleagues studied and compared the genomes of Neanderthals and an archaic human group living in Siberia
00:08:42
Speaker
around 30 to 50,000 years ago called the Denisovans. And so during this period, 30 to 50,000 years ago about, we know that Neanderthals, along with our human ancestors and the Denisovans, were coexisting because we were spreading outward from Africa into Europe and Asia, and they were already pre-existent in those populations.
00:09:08
Speaker
So the research from this study showed that apparently the Denisovan populations really got around. And that was their words, not mine. He literally said they got around. Because their DNA indicated that they were mixing not only with the Neanderthals, but with the ancestors of the modern human groups that ended up in Oceania and China.
00:09:32
Speaker
as well as another yet to be identified group that was neither human nor Neanderthal. So it sounds like they were pretty busy. Maybe if they had paid a little more attention to finding food and shelter, and less to doing every strange but vaguely familiar creature on two legs they encountered, they wouldn't have gone extinct. But hindsight is 20-20, you know?
00:09:59
Speaker
So it was actually a very entertaining article. I loved this quote from Mark Thomas of University College London who left the meeting where they were discussing this and immediately began plotting a long-lost token novel in his head. He says, what it begins to suggest is that we're looking at a Lord of the Rings type world where there were many hominid populations.
00:10:24
Speaker
As for who or what this mystery group of Asian Denisovan lovers might be, Chris Stringer of the Natural History Museum of London says, we don't have the faintest idea. Though my guess would most likely be Urakai, who seemed to me like maybe all of that pent-up aggression could have been cured by just a little bit of sweet, sweet lovin'. Maybe their ancestors were a little bit more balanced in that respect.
00:10:53
Speaker
So Stringer speculates that they may have been related to Homo heidelbergenzis, who is a hominid who left Africa and gave rise to the Neanderthals in Europe about 500,000 years ago. It's possible that heidelbergenzis also spread to Asia at the same time and created these positively orc-like near humans. Though, I mean, the orc is technically elf sired, the elf is also human-like, so it still counts.
00:11:23
Speaker
Or if token is too complicated for you, just imagine you're in the seven kingdoms where Winterfell is Europe and the Starks not only dress like but actually are Neanderthals. Keep following here. King's Landing is in Africa where the oldest and most inbred populations live.
00:11:44
Speaker
And then way over to the right, past the red waste, is Dothrak, where a strange race of extremely sexy half-humans live. We thought they mainly just did it with their horses, but now it turns out that they've actually been dallying with some chicks from across the narrow sea. Maybe even a Stark kid, who knows? And then finally,
00:12:06
Speaker
We realize that in the end, it doesn't matter what happens to everyone in the Seven Kingdoms. They can die in some weird horse slaughtering ceremony or lose their heads all they want, because all along there was this little guy from King's Landing messing with them all and screwing their women.
00:12:22
Speaker
He probably brought some back with him, because eventually everyone else was demolished by some dragons, but their genes went on in the descendants of Tyrion's horse. And that, my friends, is the story of human genetics.
00:12:56
Speaker
I hope you were following it. If you are not a humongous sci-fi fantasy geek like me, then basically it's just a way of explaining how all of these early hominid groups basically just had sex with each other as they were traveling around the world. Which does happen to be very similar to the plot of the Song of Ice and Fire books, whatever.
00:13:25
Speaker
So, you know, when you're teaching, you got to find new and interesting ways to make it relevant, to make people understand. I used to teach kids science classes, and I used to explain the atom and electrons and chemical compounds by using Legos, because that's what the kids understood. And you know what? They loved those damn Legos. They loved electrons and how they fit together.
00:13:55
Speaker
atoms that made things. They got it. So I'm hoping all of you out there understand a little bit better how the human genome was created through my illustration of Westerosian sex circles. How about that?
00:14:12
Speaker
So anyway, I just thought you'd find that interesting. I thought it was pretty funny. I always think it's cool when we discover a new species or a new group of human ancestors or relatives that we didn't really previously know about. And I think genetics is a really great way to explore all of those things because now we know genetically that they exist and we just have to like
00:14:35
Speaker
flesh out all the other things we want to know about them and eventually we'll understand about this entirely new people that we didn't know about before who were apparently sleeping with the Denisovans of Siberia and possibly some Neanderthals so cool good for you guys at least you got some before you went extinct
Conference Advice for Students
00:15:00
Speaker
And with that, we are moving on to the next segment. No, it's not shorty news. It's a little advice with Aunt Jenny time today. I know not all of you are interested in archaeology or history from a career standpoint.
00:15:20
Speaker
But for people who are interested in going into the field, maybe starting out in the undergraduate world, I wanted to make the podcast also about explaining how I kind of am learning still how to tread water in this world and sort of maybe give some advice and help others to wade their way through the
00:15:49
Speaker
tempestuous waters of professional academics so if you're not that interested maybe you can I don't know scram for a bit or something but anyway I wanted to have a little bit of a chat with people younger maybe newer people in the field about getting acquainted with academic conferences which is a very important part of becoming a professional in
00:16:19
Speaker
Not just anthropology, but almost any serious academic field. This is something that you will have to be a part of at some point.
00:16:30
Speaker
And I know I did not know pretty much anything about them when I went into the discipline and when I started school and I learned. But I think I demonstrated in the first episode of the podcast, I am not that person who automatically knows all of the ins and outs to this stuff and what I'm supposed to do and where I'm supposed to go and who I'm supposed to talk to. I am just awkward at that stuff.
00:16:55
Speaker
So it's a big learning curve for me. So hopefully this will help it be a little bit less of one for you. So first off, what is a conference? A conference is basically an opportunity for professionals and students to gather and share the latest developments in their field. And it's often relating to specific themes or topics within it that are decided by the organization putting the conference on.
00:17:22
Speaker
They're sponsored by these organizations and there's tons of them all around the world devoted to academic disciplines like anthropology. But other fields too, obviously there's medical conferences and whatever, all these other, there's a lot, you know, they're everywhere. So the conferences that you may want to think about attending will depend on your area of study. So I would start doing some research into the region and the discipline most appropriate for your interests.
00:17:51
Speaker
say like I work right now mostly in southeastern American historical archaeology so I am looking into conferences in those general areas and then more specific areas like my thesis is on African-American archaeology so I would be looking into something a little bit more focused on that field as well
00:18:18
Speaker
And there's tons and tons of them out there. So if you want to get a good idea of the wide range of conferences available, I would check out perhaps the Archaeological Institute of America's website, because they have a pretty good list of annual conferences and meetings around the world, along with links to all of those web pages with all the information you'll need.
00:18:41
Speaker
So I guess I'll give you some examples of some of the conferences that I plan on trying to attend in the coming year. I try to go to SAA every year, which is the Society for American Archaeology. They have a big conference. The SHA, Society for Historical Archaeology, is very relevant to me. And it's a huge conference, so I try to go to that. SEAC.
00:19:04
Speaker
I just missed actually because I was not able to attend as the Southeastern Archaeological Conference, which is also pretty relevant to me.
00:19:12
Speaker
These are just some of like the really big ones from my areas of study, but they all get super specific Like you could find I'm sure if you looked hard enough the international meeting for experimental archaeology for the recreation of early 16th century pilgrim shoe buckles Or something like that. I don't think that's a real thing if it is I Yay, good for you guys. That sounds really great Good luck with that
00:19:42
Speaker
Anyway, a lot of the organizations that put on these conferences also publish academic journals like American Antiquity, plain old Antiquity, American Anthropologist, American Ethnologist, all that, etc.
00:19:57
Speaker
So it's a good idea. You'll learn more about those academic journals from going to the conferences as well. Maybe sign up for them while you're there. You'll get free copies of them. You can read and kind of get acquainted with how they work as well. And so at the conferences, you'll kind of
00:20:16
Speaker
get to learn about how we within the academic community frame the discussion on our research with both written and oral peer reviews and presentations.
00:20:28
Speaker
So basically what is the conference? You'll get there and usually depending on the size of the conference, it's a couple of days. It could be two days. It could be four days. It's at a specific location. They have it all organized usually with a conference center. They'll have basically maybe like hotels that they have deals with that you can stay at and you'll have to register online beforehand and then you can go
00:20:55
Speaker
You have to pay, obviously. But then you can go and basically spend the entire time listening to professionals in the field, presenting talks on pretty much any research subject you can imagine. There's a whole bunch of different ones and they're structured differently. There's symposiums. There's like, you know, that you'll have a group talking about a lot of different topics within this one area.
00:21:21
Speaker
like Caribbean archaeology or something like that and then you could go over to the next room where they're talking about underwater cave archaeology or something like that and you get a program that tells you every single day every single paper that's being presented and you can like sit there and meticulously plan out every single talk you want to go to and then it's like a big
00:21:46
Speaker
game of Tetris where you try and fit them all in and it's actually pretty nerdy fun if you like things like that. So anyway, you'll go to the talks. There's a lot of PowerPoints, a lot of discussion afterwards, things like that. So there's roundtable discussions. You can take part in question and answer periods with the authors of the research.
00:22:10
Speaker
There's also posters that are presented by the author of the research that it is representing and they're all sitting in a big room and you can walk around and look at all the different posters where those people are presenting their research.
00:22:25
Speaker
and you can usually talk to them about it. It's pretty cool. There's also usually a big area to look at and buy books, academic books, archaeology gear. There's little be a room full of booths from different companies that you can stop and chat with or where you can learn about
00:22:45
Speaker
Different companies if you're interested in jobs with them Universities will be there you can talk to you representatives from the university Just all these different people and organizations that you can get Acquainted with and talk and buy you know you can make lifelong friendships that you'll have forever and ever and Then you go drinking basically
00:23:11
Speaker
Of course, not if you're under age, but I definitely would recommend not skipping the after party at the hotel bar if I were you. Great place to network. And you didn't hear that from me. So my advice to you, if you're an undergraduate, go to conferences.
00:23:35
Speaker
The great thing about being a student is that you can sign up to volunteer at these conferences for eight hours during the weekend. You'll work for the organization in exchange for a free ticket to the conference. Usually, members of the association get a discounted registration price and then non-members pay a higher price. But either way, if you go to a bunch of conferences during the year, it's pretty expensive.
00:24:02
Speaker
So if you know you want to go and you're a student, you can sign up to enjoy the whole thing for free. All you have to do is volunteer a couple hours of your time, which really isn't that big of a deal. I've done it and it's totally worth it. So yeah, if you do that at some point, you'll be scheduled to work for a couple of hours.
00:24:21
Speaker
You'll do things like registration of guests, operating the computers at the symposiums where you load their PowerPoints for the presenters and stuff. You can sit at a booth selling books. I mean, whatever. It's totally worth avoiding the $200 fee or whatever it is to sit in a bunch of rooms listening to people talk. But you get to do that anyway!
00:24:47
Speaker
So yeah, definitely volunteer. And you can go to the websites of all of these different conferences and most of them, at least the big ones, will make it very clear if they are looking for volunteers or not. And then you can sign up pretty easily through the website. So as far as other expenses, like traveling to the location, hotel rooms,
00:25:08
Speaker
There are different ways you can be funded to go to the conference. If you're in school, it may be possible to get a grant from your university or department to help with the costs. And what we usually did was write up a grant
00:25:25
Speaker
request to the school and put a bunch of names on it of the people who wanted to go and then if it's approved the school will actually give you a grant for the money to cover the cost of traveling in hotels, which is a really amazing thing. I'm not saying that it is available for every single school or every single student. It's totally possible you might have to end up paying for some of this yourself, but those type of things are often available. So talk to your department and find out your options.
00:25:55
Speaker
definitely go with a group of people from your school because the more people you go with the less cost you will incur just personally and you'll also have a good time I mean I would hope you're at least friendly with the people you go to school with in your program so and if you're not like the first time I went I didn't know a lot of people in my program very well and
00:26:17
Speaker
But I ended up having an amazing time and I came back four days later and we were all super best friends, which was great because I didn't know them very well before. You'll never know what's going to happen at these conferences until you go and experience it yourself. It's fun. Other advice, don't be a wallflower. Oh my gosh, I can't stress this enough. If you're going to go,
00:26:43
Speaker
Be professional. You have to get a nice professional wardrobe. You don't want to be the guy running around in jeans and sandals or the guy dressed up like Indiana Jones. Don't do that. Do not. Don't do it. Yeah, look professional. And people, you'll find opportunities to talk to different people.
00:27:11
Speaker
And if you're a wallflower and you're not comfortable, try and get out of your comfort zone and just try going up to people and talking to them. There are so many opportunities. Not only can you network and make connections with people who you might be able to work with professionally at some point,
00:27:29
Speaker
It's just good etiquette in the professional world to be able to go out and to talk to everyone and socialize and talk about your work and just put yourself out there. So talk to as many people as you can.
00:27:47
Speaker
Get their cards. If you really loved someone's presentation, go up and talk to them afterwards. Ask them some questions. Ask for their card. Keep up with them after the conference. Email them. Ask about their works. And you know, like, there's so many opportunities people waste. And I've seen it and it's so frustrating. And I'm not saying I'm the best at it either. Oh my gosh, there was this guy I went to my first conference with who was absolutely in freaking,
00:28:15
Speaker
Sane networker he was like I don't know he come back at the end of the day He had like 200 business cards on him from people who were like, oh, hey. Yeah, give me a call Maybe you can come and do an internship at my Museum or company or whatever, you know, oh, hey. Yeah, give me a call like he was just so on it He would go up and talk to anyone and it was really awesome to look at
00:28:40
Speaker
especially okay so story so after at the end of the night after they're all done there's usually going to be a big party at the hotel bar like the official hotel that everybody's staying at
00:28:52
Speaker
If you're old enough, go to this party and network and talk to people because once people have left their long day of being totally serious and gotten a beer in their hand, they are much cooler. So this is the best time to meet and network with people. And I remember seeing a guy who had given a presentation I saw
00:29:11
Speaker
from Harvard who was just absolutely amazing and intelligent and wonderful and French and extremely handsome. And we were all sitting there like googling over him and the sky was just like, oh hey, you guys wanna talk to this dude? Okay. He just like went over, grabbed him by the arm, was like, hey, how are you doing? Come on over here and talk to us. And then we literally spent like 45 minutes talking to him and it was so amazing.
00:29:39
Speaker
And I still have his card and email address, so if I were single. I didn't just say that. Anyway, go to the bar, not if you're underage, but go anyway, and drink and talk to people. So this is my advice for conferences. Give it a try. Even if you're not comfortable and you're scared in social situations, please just
00:30:08
Speaker
Just do it. And go to as many talks as you can also. I know people who were like, oh, hey, I'm on vacation. I'm going to go shopping in the morning. Blah, blah, blah. No, don't do that. You are there to be part of a professional conference of people sharing ideas and research and being a part of the back and forth of the academic community. You're not there to be on vacation until after all the conferences are done at the end of the night. Then you can go party.
00:30:38
Speaker
But during the day, don't waste your time. Go to see as many people present as possible. Just make sure you plan it all. You can get to most everything you really want to see. And it is a lot more exciting and entertaining than it sounds like. I'm sure for people who
00:31:01
Speaker
aren't used to the academic lingo and all of that. It doesn't sound that great, but I swear you'll be so jazzed about your career at the end of it. It is intimidating. I totally get that. It's overwhelming. But you will feel like you know so much more about the academic world after you've been to it. So that's my advice for conferences.
00:31:29
Speaker
If you are at another stage in your academic career like I am, where you are actually ready to start presenting your research to the world, then you can actually submit to be a presenter at these conferences.
00:31:44
Speaker
So like my thesis research, for instance, once I'm basically done with my research and my analysis, I can make an abstract to submit to all of these conferences so that I can hopefully go to them next year and be one of the presenters.
00:32:04
Speaker
You'll have a certain date you have to submit all of your abstracts by. You don't have to submit your entire paper. Everyone at the conference, for the most part, you have to check their guidelines, will be presenting about 15 minute long papers. And they time this so you literally cannot speak over 15 minutes. So that's how long your presentation will be. You have to write an abstract to give them that describes what you would be presenting. It's usually pretty short, like three to 500 words,
00:32:34
Speaker
and the conference website will probably have a template for you to work off of. And if they do, do not ever deviate from it. Give them exactly what they asked for. And make it an extremely well-written presentation of your work. Do not waste their time with jargon or crazy talk. Plan every word to be appropriate and intelligent.
00:32:57
Speaker
I definitely recommend having an advisor look over it, maybe more than one advisor look over it, help you fine tune it, help you make sure you're on the right direction. Yeah, and don't go over the word limit again. It's kind of like the old auditions in New York I used to go to. You get two minutes to sing. If you go over your two minutes, they will dismiss you immediately, so do not go over the word limit.
00:33:20
Speaker
It's kind of like that. And then have a good title. A good title is good to draw, to draw them in. And okay, so the abstract, basically my advice for what to write, begin by explaining what problem or question has prompted your research.
00:33:38
Speaker
Why is that question or problem worth answering? And what is the context of your work? Why should anyone care about it? You got to convince them that it's worth learning about before they'll let anyone listen to you, right?
00:33:55
Speaker
So after that, in a brief section, establish what you did in your research. Tell them about the project, the materials, or site you're working with, whatever, your methods in how you analyzed it, and your results. What steps or evidence led you to the argument or conclusion you're presenting?
00:34:16
Speaker
Give them necessary details, but be sparing you can't go into too much of the nitty-gritty stuff, so try to make this section as concise and rational as possible. And then, in the end, just try to convince the reader that your research is important to the wider context of work in your discipline.
00:34:32
Speaker
If they find it relevant and exciting they'll want to give you the time to present it. If it sounds like just another boring old thing that every single other person has done before and really isn't that important in the grand scheme of things then they're gonna throw your submission away. Not everyone who submits gets to present at conferences so make your abstract very good and then you will be on your way to becoming a professional
00:34:59
Speaker
by presenting your research in front of a body of your peers. And that is what academics are all about. So that is my advice to you friends about attending and presenting at archaeological conferences. So yeah,
00:35:17
Speaker
give it a look out there and you don't necessarily have to be an academic to go to these things if you're really into the academic world but it's just a past time for you but you really like hearing
00:35:32
Speaker
in depth about like crazy history and archaeology topics, you could go to a conference. It would be like it's like nerd history heaven and you get to walk around the entire day and listen to really, really, really smart people talk about all this super interesting stuff. So even if you're not doing it for professional gain, you might even want to check them out because there's a lot of them. So there might be something in your area that you could go to.
00:36:02
Speaker
Or, like, some of these conferences are in awesome locations. This year, I think, was it SHA? I'm not sure which one. One of them was in Hawaii. Honolulu. Last year, the year before, it was in London. So, yeah, it's not the worst thing in the world to be stuck at an academic conference for four days.
00:36:23
Speaker
Anyway, just a little bit of advice from your Aunt Jenny to all of you who are hoping to make a name for yourself in the field and continue your academic growth by becoming a part of the community.
00:36:41
Speaker
So, good luck with all of your ventures. If you're going to be at any of the conferences I mentioned this year, let me know. Because if I'm able to make it, we could always meet up and be like, hey, hey, I'm Jenny. Whatever. Have a drink. No, I mean, not if you're young, but hey. Still, not if you're young.
00:37:05
Speaker
But anyway, that's it for this segment.
Future Podcast Plans
00:37:08
Speaker
And let's take a minute to think about the future of the podcast.
00:37:14
Speaker
Yeah, I've been having a lot of fun doing the podcast for everyone and for myself. I mean, it's a good time and I enjoy recording it and hearing back from people has been wonderful. So I'm going to keep them coming. I want to be realistic because I would love this to be a weekly or biweekly podcast, but reality is that I am a working gal and
00:37:39
Speaker
I've been a little bit sidetracked on my thesis recently. So I've got a lot of work to do on that still before it's ready. And I am also a house woman who cleans the house and take care of my husband and my dogs and all that. So I'm just busy and reality is I don't always have the time to do this.
00:38:06
Speaker
as often as I would wish. So I will try to keep bringing them to you as often as I can. And hopefully that is okay. I hope you can live without me for three or four weeks at a time. But as long as when you do come back, you enjoy the work that I'm doing, that's all I need to feel good about the podcast and everything else in my life. So
00:38:34
Speaker
Thank you for listening. Again, I'm going to try and keep up a little bit more often with the blog on Tumblr. I did a couple really fun posts on it the last couple of weeks. One was we named the dog Indiana, which is my personal recommendations for the next Indiana Jones movie. You should check that out.
00:38:53
Speaker
I also wrote one called Archaeology is Dirty, and it's just a little snippet about the realities of being an archaeology student for some people who do not exactly realize what they're getting into. Hence, archaeology is dirty, which maybe not everyone realizes when they sign up for archaeology school.
00:39:17
Speaker
So there's that type of stuff. I also put up pictures, inspirational quotes, news stories that I find interesting. You can find all of it on guidetogettingdirty.tumblr.com. So check them out and follow me on Twitter. Tweet me a tweet. And that's it for today.
00:39:39
Speaker
I'm going to do some ceramics analysis with my access program, which I hate. Oh my God, access sucks. But whatever, it's going to be a fun night when I actually really wish I was just curled up on the couch because we're having the first blizzard of the winter here in New Mexico.
00:40:01
Speaker
And I love snow. I love snow. It's the little winter wonderland outside and I just want to be curled up on my couch watching Elf. Drinking scotch or something, I don't know. But anyway, I can't do that yet. I've still got a good five hours before I'm allowed to sit down and watch TV, so.
00:40:24
Speaker
Thesis, time it is for Jenny. And with that, I bid you adieu, fair listeners, until we meet again.
00:41:09
Speaker
you
00:41:37
Speaker
you