Tag: academia

Anonymous asks:

I love your insight and your posts!!! You’ve made me think about the Pokémon world in ways I never looked at. Just one question, do you sometimes feel overwhelmed by your commitment to this?

AH-HAHAHAHAHA HAHAHAHAHAHAHA BAHAHAHAHAHAHA

ahahahahahahahahahahaha

ha

yes

Seriously though… yes, most of the time.  But the thing is, I’m an academic, and academia has a way of trying to make itself into the only source of achievement or self-worth in your life, in a way that’s honestly kinda toxic.  So even if it’s hard to find the time for it, I think it’s important for me, personally, to keep doing this.  That, and it’s good to always be writing.

Check out this thing; I command it

My BFF, Jim the Editor, who proofreads everything on this blog and helps me think over most of the questions I receive, has a new podcast, starting in a few days.  He calls it Nearly Experts, and it is a series of interviews with PhD students from around the world and in different fields about their research, their lives, and academia (I do not feature in season 1, because Jim and his recording studio are at the University of St. Andrews in Scotland, whereas I normally live in Ohio and am currently spending a year in Greece, but the stars may yet align for me to make an appearance in season 2).  If that sounds like the sort of thing you might be interested in, check out the introductory episode below!

https://soundcloud.com/nearlyexperts

https://www.facebook.com/NearlyExperts/

Anonymous asks:

What would you study if not Classics/archaeology?

Well, when I was a kid I wanted to be a palaeontologist.  I sort of wrote that off as unrealistic when I was in high school, but actually, now that I’m a real archaeologist and dig stuff up and do proper scholarly research, honestly I do think I probably could have pulled it off if I’d kept going with biology and geology.  Evolutionary history is a fascinating rabbit hole.  I’m not sure I’d have the patience for taxonomic debates, though.  I mean, people can literally spend years arguing about whether a single jawbone represents a new species or not.