inane cynical rambling
Wow, I never meant to go this long without updating this thing, but I wasn't really feeling like I had to go a tell everybody about my (less than) exciting life and career. Archaeology, of course, is really, really fun. Except when it isn't, like when you're trying to dig holes in a stupid field where the landforms have obviously been smushed and rearranged by a bulldozer and there are different soil colors and textures in every third hole and you have identify them and force that crappy, bulldozed dirt through a screen. Meanwhile, this entire field is simply thick with the kind of vegetation that thrives in disturbed areas, which is to say briars. Also, the temperature is below freezing because it is December in Michigan.
Oh, yes, Michigan. Last time I updated this it was Illinois, but now it's Michigan. Midwestern craziness!
So anyway, the point here is that being a field tech isn't always all that awesome. Keep that in mind while I describe I job listing that I saw on the internet. This was for work in Ohio, Indiana and Kentucky in the next few months. The starting pay was $10 an hour, and you had to pass a drug test. Now, archaeologically, Ohio is a really cool place, but I can think of a whole bunch of other places where I would rather spend the winter working outside. $10 an hour is not great, especially for someone who (presumably) has a degree. And having to submit to a drug test is, like, a total violation of your civil rights, man (not to mention that the percentage of archaeologists that can pass a drug test is significantly lower than the population at large). So what kind of response do you think that this posting got? They got buried under an avalanche of respondents.
My friend says that there are just too many field techs. The surplus of labor keeps wages low and means that companies can do things like make their (mostly temporary) employees do things like work 10-hour days during December, when there may or may not actually be ten hours of daylight, or work in a place nationally reknown as a destination for trophy hunters on the first day of whitetail deer season. The former is the case in a job listing I saw posted this week, the latter was what the company I left was planning to make its employees do. At any given time, there is more labor available than work, and a lot of it is always in the form of kids just out of school, like me. I large proportion of these people will leave archaeology when they find out that they are far more likely to look down and find more ticks crawling on their pants than they ever thought they'd see in their lifetime than they are to find a Folsom point. More replacements then arrive in the form of that year's graduating class.
All that said, I'd rather do this job than work in an office. In an office, you don't get to see migrating swans fly overhead, like I did the other day.
Oh, yes, Michigan. Last time I updated this it was Illinois, but now it's Michigan. Midwestern craziness!
So anyway, the point here is that being a field tech isn't always all that awesome. Keep that in mind while I describe I job listing that I saw on the internet. This was for work in Ohio, Indiana and Kentucky in the next few months. The starting pay was $10 an hour, and you had to pass a drug test. Now, archaeologically, Ohio is a really cool place, but I can think of a whole bunch of other places where I would rather spend the winter working outside. $10 an hour is not great, especially for someone who (presumably) has a degree. And having to submit to a drug test is, like, a total violation of your civil rights, man (not to mention that the percentage of archaeologists that can pass a drug test is significantly lower than the population at large). So what kind of response do you think that this posting got? They got buried under an avalanche of respondents.
My friend says that there are just too many field techs. The surplus of labor keeps wages low and means that companies can do things like make their (mostly temporary) employees do things like work 10-hour days during December, when there may or may not actually be ten hours of daylight, or work in a place nationally reknown as a destination for trophy hunters on the first day of whitetail deer season. The former is the case in a job listing I saw posted this week, the latter was what the company I left was planning to make its employees do. At any given time, there is more labor available than work, and a lot of it is always in the form of kids just out of school, like me. I large proportion of these people will leave archaeology when they find out that they are far more likely to look down and find more ticks crawling on their pants than they ever thought they'd see in their lifetime than they are to find a Folsom point. More replacements then arrive in the form of that year's graduating class.
All that said, I'd rather do this job than work in an office. In an office, you don't get to see migrating swans fly overhead, like I did the other day.