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Degrees, careers and finances - ZSilvia - 2nd June 2012
I'll bite on the question posed to students by K.W.
I started to pursue archaeology in 2007 back in America (where I've emigrated from). Literally the week, I made the final decision I landed myself on a role on a dig, before taking nay archaeology classes, which lead to a three year work experience over the summers, just by writing an email and asking the people in charge of the dig if they'd take me. I had absolutely no experience and while the dig was an academic one, it was not through my own university (my uni didn't actually offer much archaeology in our anthro dept.), just to illustrate how easy it was to get a position. That experience lead to another surveying role on another dig. As of 2009 everyone around me was getting paid work, working on summer contracts when not in school. Or they were in school part time and doing contract work full time. Within a year all that dried up and I graduated in 2010 with nothing but those academic roles and no real work experience (aside from everything else I've done workwise, which is loaded with warehouse management and screenprinting experience xx( ) Couldnt find work for the life of me in the U.S. or U.K. so decided to do this masters just to stay on topic.
The only reason I outline all of these boring details of my life is because I think it illustrates the time my generation is growing up in. This isnt unique to archaeology. I don't think professors could have advised students properly on the archaeology job market because a lot of us are still of a generation that began when things were good and looking really positive. I would have done archaeology anyway in the end, but theres only so far academics can go when the magic carpet is still flying high. They do the best they can given the circumstances.
Degrees, careers and finances - Bodger51 - 2nd June 2012
Go through any of the documents relating to Archaeological graduate employment opportunities and there is a distant fanciful element to them.
It’s all in the pipeline, but for years these things were being portrayed by recruitment advisors and it seems no one pointed out that the profession does not and continued not to represent the realities of the profession, up until my awareness ceased.
I say this though, whilst I remember seeing large numbers of people goinginto particular sector areas because they had career structure, but that was still working upon the isolationist positioning (largely relating to limited ethical discussions, of commonality and stress load comparisons)
As for external employment opportunities, if it wasn't for the Arab Springin highlighting the impact of social media and other potential social sciences (hokum) then it seems that it’s really a profession for identity diversification and the financially self sufficient, instead of actually observing therelevance of the applications.
The applications of the skill base has been difficult to get any measure of discussion on, with the motivation relating to career development mostly being fixated upon ?500 pay rise criterions.
It got rather tedious being informed of over complications, but logisticalstreamlining has evidently not presented a prepared career path foundation aside from the classic starvation 'hypothesis' with selective feeding/breeding (as a Neolithic repertoire revolution).
I just remember a cartoon stipulating 'welcome to the Neolithic revolution'.Crass with a bad taste in the current situation.
Likewise a ladder determined by Iron Age territory modelling for warlord based conflicts.
Among the plethora of cognitive mnemonically classifications for Block's quantifiable characterisation into determinative GIS programming territoreality.
Don't worry about not having, or getting into, work.
Assess the skills, identify skill applications and crack on.
The fact is the workload cracked it, and the subsequent subjective skill and training panics, maintain interest diversity towards the lack of coherence, that determines the need for university based qualitative workforce character.
I'd call it market force swamping, with or without the m.
Degrees, careers and finances - RedEarth - 2nd June 2012
Once again Bodger, succinct and to the point, you've really hit the nail on the head there.
Degrees, careers and finances - Jack - 7th June 2012
Anyone else think Bodger's streams of consciousness read like song lyrics...?
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'I got ham, but i'm not a hamster'
Degrees, careers and finances - eloeeze - 7th June 2012
That Jack, or a Markov chain: http://www.doctornerve.org/nerve/pages/interact/mrkvform.shtml