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Monday, August 22, 2005
Last Week of Fun: Day 3
I finally got to see some action today as I prepare to begin my graduate assistantship and classes, the latter starting next Monday. I had a meeting with my GA advisor where he explained to me a little about how the program works and the types of things I will be doing. Not ten minutes later I was actually helping another on of his GAs do some photocopying of journal articles for his Human Variation course. He also showed me one of the two biological anthropology laboratories which is in the process of being converted. There is quite a bit of organizing and arranging that needs to be done, so that will be one of my jobs as well. Part of the lab's bone/crania collection is a little scattered so I decided it would be nice to have a "bone closest" of sorts instead of having them in different locations. I knew I felt comfortable at USF when I wasn't weirded out handling a dozen or so human crania in a basement lab by myself. The department soon hopes to have them all bar-coded for easy check-out and referencing which I'm sure I'll be helping with.
The anthropology department new graduate student orientation was tonight as well. It was helpful in many respects and I finally got to match faces to all the names I had read about online and in the catalog. Not surprisingly much of the faculty seems very nice and all were thrilled that we had chosen South Florida. I got the distinct impression that all of them were very proud of the department and its various aspects. That made me even more confident in my decision to attend.
After the orientation there was a reception/party at a professor's house. Aside from the SEAC in 2003, it was the largest group of anthropologists in one room that I've seen. Not knowing anyone made it a little awkward but I eventually felt very comfortable mingling and meeting the new students as well as some second years. For the first time in a long time I felt like I was "in my element." It's not very often that I get to talk about research and areas of interest and have the other person know what the hell I'm talking about. All in all a great evening and a much-needed reinforcement of my graduate school choice.
Posted by Will at August 22, 2005 11:17 PM in Graduate School