Pre-Scoping Update
I leave for Ecuador tomorrow for a month. A month of "scoping" to find a place where maybe just maybe in a year or two I can return and begin a year of intense fieldwork for my dissertation. I'm starting in Quito. If it sucks by the end of two weeks, i'll jump on a flight to Cuenca and spend the following two weeks trying to do what I failed to do in Quito.
I am nervous. And feeling like an ENORMOUS fraud. I hear that everybody in grad school/academia feels like a fraud at some point except for a few assholes who really are frauds, and that perhaps this is especially true of anthropologists who intentionally go to places where they cannot possibly be prepared to understand how or what they are doing. All that said, I'm pretty sure I know less than those people ever did and that I don't know what I'm doing but FOR REAL NOT LIKE THOSE OTHER GUYS and also I should probably quit and go work at Borders again. Borders was fun! There were lots of children's books!
Of course, in addition to making me crazy and sleep-deprived and somewhat damaging my important relationships, my time in the anthropology department here has been the richest, most fulfilling, most blessing-filled time of an otherwise still awesome life. And this trip is gonna be okay. And even if I come back having alienated all the rich people in Quito AND Cuenca with no site affiliations and no money, there's still Guayauquil! And I'll have a better idea of what not to screw up next time.
WIsh me luck!
I am nervous. And feeling like an ENORMOUS fraud. I hear that everybody in grad school/academia feels like a fraud at some point except for a few assholes who really are frauds, and that perhaps this is especially true of anthropologists who intentionally go to places where they cannot possibly be prepared to understand how or what they are doing. All that said, I'm pretty sure I know less than those people ever did and that I don't know what I'm doing but FOR REAL NOT LIKE THOSE OTHER GUYS and also I should probably quit and go work at Borders again. Borders was fun! There were lots of children's books!
Of course, in addition to making me crazy and sleep-deprived and somewhat damaging my important relationships, my time in the anthropology department here has been the richest, most fulfilling, most blessing-filled time of an otherwise still awesome life. And this trip is gonna be okay. And even if I come back having alienated all the rich people in Quito AND Cuenca with no site affiliations and no money, there's still Guayauquil! And I'll have a better idea of what not to screw up next time.
WIsh me luck!