The Full Fulbright Experience

20 Things that Happen on Your First Dig - From a non-archaeologist

1. You are super excited for your first dig and firmly believe you are the new Indiana Jones.
2. You will find yourself with cuts and blisters all over your hands and not notice until much, much later. (We should have worn our gloves like they told us to.)
3. DIRT - it is everywhere
4. Even on the cloudiest, rainiest days you still manage to get just as sunburned as any other day.
5. You quickly learn that you will not become Indiana Jones overnight and that this is incredibly hard work.
6. There comes a point when you question why you are sweeping dirt from the earth.
7. Every mineral becomes a question of "Is this a rock OR IS IT A NEW DISCOVERY??!?"
8 . And no matter how hopeful you are, it is usually just a rock.
9. But there is still hope that you will magically find something that the other experienced diggers have not been able to find in 20 years.
10. When you do finally find something, you are the only one who gets excited because everyone else has already found the same thing multiple times.
11. And all the other archeologists seem to know everything about anything by just looking at the small piece of bone you have just found.
12. WHERE IS THE BATHROOM???
13. Lunch break is a gift from God.
14. So is the nap on the bus ride home.
15. Time goes by fairly quickly when you are digging with some great people and great friends.
16. When you shower that night, you will wonder if it is possible to ever be as clean as you once were before you went to a dig.
17.The Next Morning you will feel like you ran a marathon even though all day you were kneeling on a padded mat
18. Your knees and your back will be sore beyond belief
19. You will wonder why you signed up for this because you are not an archeologist and firmly believe that your body cannot handle it
20. But at the end of the day you will feel incredibly accomplished and have lots of fun

Interviews with the Fulbright Scholars


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