If you’ve got to write an essay do your research (if you’ve got to).
The time demand variation between my subjects is rather astounding. I am currently working on a paper worth 7.5% (geochemistry), due in two days. Meanwhile I have an assignment, due yesterday, as yet unstarted, worth 30% (museum studies). But I know the 7.5% one will take me ten times as long, and will be marked about twenty times harder.
It’s just not fair! Sometimes I feel like ‘arts’ doesn’t even have the right to be called a degree… (no disrespect, but seriously, the discrepancy is insane).
Heron Island was awesome, obviously. Now I actually feel like I have a “right” to call myself a palaeontologist. I’ve felt it a long time with geologist, but now my palaeo knowledge is actually at a level where I don’t feel like I am lying.
On my fieldtrip we had a ‘guest’ lecturer (he goes with them every year) – he’s a palaeontologist from Canada. During the boozy, hazy last night of fieldwork I was talking to him about my palaeoanthropology intentions (he teaches some palaeoanth.) and he told me something I have never heard before (and actually, why would I have, I have never met anyone who actually knows anything about palaeoanth. from a science background). Apparently it’s extremely hard to get into, in his words “it’s cutthroat, and it’s nasty and you have to be the best of the best”.
I guess that’s pretty discouraging, but I sort of don’t care. It would be dumb to not even try. In some ways it’s made me more motivated to do better overall, just for the chance.
