I’m going to open this blog post with a confession: I am already behind in the research and writing process this semester. In this course, I hope to produce a paper for the Society for American Archaeology (SAA) conference at the end of March. Given that the conference occurs on the last weekend of March, I should have had a plan in place last semester and all my data analysis should completed. Neither of these tasks are completed. However, in this post I will outline my goals and my plan for achieving them in the limited time remaining.
My Output: My Private and Public Products for the Winter 2017 Semester
In brief, I hope that my final product successfully occupies the intersection between methodology and theory. As it stands, the chemical composition results that I’ve produced are inconsistent with my expectations of anthropogenic impacts. These expectations were founded on existing research aims and suggestions of potential that abound in the field of archaeological geochemistry. I hope to begin this paper with a presentation of ITRAX core scanning as a novel method for archaeological soil analysis. My focus will be on situating my method within an archaeological movement towards increased resolution and efficient sampling protocols. I wish to continue by describing the limited evidence for hunter-gatherer occupations that I’ve observed on traditionally identified sites. Referencing data from my study sites in Ontario, I wish to illustrate the minimal evidence that seems to exist for Archaic occupations. By considering questions about residential impacts and mobility, I wish to highlight the impacts of site-centric archaeology and commonplace notions of residential and logistic mobility. I hope this discussion will highlight the ability for scientific methods to contribute to narratives about the past while highlighting my preliminary results.
As you can see, I only have a rough idea of what my final product will achieve. I intend to produce a series of private and public works over the course of the next few months to develop my ideas. By engaging in an extensive drafting and peer editing process, I will produce more than simply a final product in this course. I will begin by free-writing about my findings as I collect and process them. I hope that allowing myself to write informally and privately before finalizing my results will help address the necessity of writing early despite having incomplete data. By writing something that will not be shared, I hope to become comfortable documenting my mistakes, identifying weaknesses, addressing confusion, and celebrating the strengths in my research and writing. I also hope to be able to track the evolution of my ideas as I collect resources and results. This type of personal writing still falls within my comfort zone. Many of my fears and anxieties concerning writing stem from the realization that I am writing for other people. I hope to challenge myself by also creating public products that will be read by small groups of peers as I progress towards a final public product. I hope to begin this process with a depiction of my methods.
I have selected methods as my starting point for public writing because I believe that this section will require significant work prior to becoming clear and concise. I do not wish to spend exorbitant amounts of time depicting my methods. However, I wish to present sufficient information to welcome discussion around potential modifications, applications, and complementary methods. I hope to provide multiple opportunities for my peers to comment and challenge me to create an engaging depiction of methods. After producing this section, I will proceed to integrate my results and discussion in smaller sections that will be circulated for review by select peer editors. I plan on having my drafting process culminate in the production of two full drafts that will be circulated among various editors. I hope the production of these semi-public drafts will encourage me to write consistently and review scrupulously.
I have some questions concerning the differences between conference papers and published articles. With this being my first conference paper, I’m not sure how to integrate materials such as diagrams and results tables in a clear and engaging manner. In many cases, I recognize that simply reading published papers would make for dull or incomprehensible presentations. I hope to benefit from the knowledge possessed by my peers to identify tangible characteristics that distinguish good conference presentations from forgettable or incomprehensible ones. By producing partial and full drafts early enough to solicit opinions and address feedback, I hope to develop my own voice and play with different structures and strategies for conference presentations. Additionally, as I would like this paper to eventually develop into a publishable article, I would like to identify the different elements that work for in presentations and papers.
Finally, I hope to have to opportunity to practice my presentation and gain feedback on my presentation skills and organization. Though this is not a writing goal, I think it is important to identify effective ways of communicating in alternate formats. I would also like to begin identifying a personal presentation style that I will be able to refine at future conferences and talks. I am not the biggest fan of public speaking, and I hope to become more comfortable by practicing my presentation in an environment where I can welcome constructive criticism and correct my mistakes. Ideally, this will help me manage my nerves when I finally present my paper.
My Schedule: Staying Accountable to Deadlines
Given the many of goals I hope to accomplish, I have laid out the following schedule:
- 6 Days a Week: 30 minutes of Free Writing
- February 12th: Complete Data Collection & Partial Draft
- February 19th: Additional Partial Draft
- February 26th: First Full Paper Draft
- March 5th: First Presentation Draft
- March 12th: Second Paper Draft
- March 19th: Second Presentation Draft
- March 26th: Final Paper Completion & Final Presentation Completion
- March 31st: Presentation Date
- April 6th: Class Presentation Date
I hope that by simply making this schedule public, I will be encouraged to hold myself accountable. Ideally, the experience of adhering to a structured process will help develop a more productive and fulfilling writing ethic. This conference presentation is also an example of an instance where my work will not stop after delivering a paper. I hope that the conversations I have at the conference will assist me in working through the problems I am currently encountering and will experience as my thesis progresses. After writing this blog post, I’m optimistic that this semester will present an opportunity to develop new work habits while producing meaningful academic products.
It is very nice to see such honesty, admitting to being behind in work, from another peer. It is such a simple thing to admit and yet we rarely hear those confessions unless it is in private behind a closed office door. So I will support Beatrice by confessing something as well: I was going to attend the SAAs too as a poster presenter, but after starting this semester, I realized it was too much for me to handle with everything else going on in my life right now. It was a decision I was delaying in making since before the break because I did not want to admit, even to myself, that I could not do it. In the end, however, I had to face reality. I am not a perfect student. I am not as brilliant of an academic as I would like myself to be and I have to accept my own limitations. This discipline of work we are in, it takes practice to stretch ourselves thin. Can you imagine stepping into the academic expectations and responsibilities we have today if we were first year undergraduates? And yet, we probably all entered our respective graduate programs last fall thinking that, in a matter of the first few weeks, we would be on intellectual par with our supervisors and course professors. So I will confess something else: sometimes I hear a professor say something, and I cannot even tell if it was a rhetorical comment or if they expect me to recite an essay. Other times, I get asked a question on which I focus so much on its eloquent delivery, that I forget to focus on what the actual question itself was. But I have to remind myself: I am here to learn. Not just learn through the research of my thesis, but learn how to survive as a graduate student. And for me, the only way I know how to learn is to ask questions (yes, the dumb ones too). And yes, I also have to admit that I have a few bad habits that lead me falling behind in work from time to time. But the only way I could ever address and correct those bad habits, are to acknowledge that, again, I am not a perfect student. This life, our graduate life, is not easy. And that’s okay.
Wow, Beatrice. Look at the vault you have opened. I hope that, in showing my vulnerability, it will reassure at least one other student that they are not alone feeling a little insane with stress and anxiety on the inside. Even if we all show up to classes with confident, calm appearances, it does not mean that all of us, at any given time, really know what the hell is going on.
Thank you for your comment! You remind me that we are perpetually going through a learning process and that in order to learn, we have to admit that we are insecure in much of our knowledge and abilities. I feel the same insecurities often! In much of my work I am looking for connections between archaeology and earth science. I always feel woefully ignorant of the literature and ideas in the hard sciences. In such an interdisciplinary field, I always find that something relevant emerges from fields where I do not understand the history, jargon, or context to initially comprehend its relevance. Your comment reminds me that though we have limitations, we can also try to grow and develop to challenge what seemed previously impossible (your example of our undergraduate to graduate change was particularly enlightening). Thank you again!
First of all, your research sounds really interesting, and that you’re looking into the impacts of site-centric archaeology.
The first conference presentation is always terrifying. I have given a few now at large conferences, and they are still so scary. But, I have learned that a good conference presentation is always one that has a foundation in a good written paper, that includes the figures and charts you mentioned in the way you are used to. I think it would help you to first write this paper, before turning into a powerpoint presentation, which should be mostly those figures and charts in the same order as they appear in your paper, and not a lot of text. Everyone is different, but I find I’ve been most successful at conference presentations when I write the paper first, then make the powerpoint with a few images and bullet points on each slide, and then turn the paper into a script (don’t just read the paper, those are always the woooorst). Imagine you’re having a conversation with somebody (or actually have a conversation with somebody) and just try to find a way to put your formal style of writing into words that you would actually speak comfortably in front of a crowd. It doesn’t need to be too technical, because you’ll lose a lot of people, just honest and thorough.