2012 Graduate Rachel Lawrence at Dickson Mounds and beyond

I started working for a retail company in May almost immediately after graduating, and I have the majority of my loans paid back.  My goal when I graduated was to work long enough to pay those loans and get a financial cushion before I continued in graduate school, and I will hopefully be returning to academia next year.  I have tried to stay in the archaeological field by volunteering at Dickson Mounds in Lewiston, Illinois, and I have staffed big events and we are working on more in this upcoming spring and summer.  Even though it is not paid work, I still feel like I am part of the staff there, and I really enjoy working with visitors, young and old, on Native American craft projects and archaeology-related topics and activities.  For example, not long after I learned how to use it successfully, I taught some visitors how to throw a dart with an atlatl. 

Between work and Dickson Mounds, I continue to revise my research project on Vlad the Impaler.  In December 2012, a conference published the revised edition of the paper I presented, and I have continued to revise and expand not only that but also my undergraduate thesis.  I would like to make Vlad part of my career, as has been my goal for almost twelve years (I am not joking), so I have kept up with the research and I am planning a trip to Romania either this fall or next year.  In the meantime, I'll just keep working.

Less Than One Year After Graduation: Emily Mella at American University

Hello UE Archaeology!  I graduated in May 2012 and spent the month of June in Israel as part of the Jezreel Expedition, which was a great experience.  We surveyed for two weeks, excavated for a week, and then spent another 12 days traveling through Israel and Jordan.  It was exhausting, but a fabulous way to spend a summer.  After getting back to the US, I picked up and moved to Washington DC to start graduate school.  I am pursuing my MA in International Affairs from American University and with a focus in the Middle East.  The first few months were a weird transition for me – I was determined to find a job that wasn’t waiting tables or working at Starbucks, but couldn’t find one and settled for an unpaid internship instead.  I got a position archiving for an NGO called the Institute for Multi-Track Diplomacy, which focuses on dialogue and conflict resolution.  My job was to go through their old program files, organize the documents, and write a project report reviewing each one.  The work was a bit boring, but I got to attend their staff meetings and interview the organization’s founder, a former US Ambassador, about the projects I was working on. 

This semester, I am doing another internship (also unpaid) for an organization called the Partnership for Global Security.  As their nuclear research intern, my job has been to gather and analyze data regarding civil nuclear programs all over the world.  My final product will be a report about the future of the civil nuclear industry for the organization.  In addition to my internships, I have been taking Arabic classes, which have been really interesting.  Living in DC is fun – I had a bit of culture shock being on the east coast (I’m from Texas originally), but the city is beautiful.  I never get less excited to see the national monuments and still haven’t explored all the city’s museums.  Plus, going to the presidential inauguration was really cool, even though it was freezing!   My plan for the summer is to try to get a job of some sort (even if it is waiting tables) and to volunteer somewhere, like the National Children’s Museum.  With a little more museum experience, I would really like to get a job designing educational programs at a museum after I graduate.

Dan M. ('10) to talk about CRM work

Join the Society for Archaeology and the History of Art (SAHA) at the University of Evansville Tuesday February 26 at 8:00 pm in Hyde 8 to hear Dan Mohorcic ('10) talk about his three years of experience working for Cultural Resource Analysts, Inc. CRA is an archaeological and historic preservation firm that specializes in cultural resources and related studies. Dan will present on some of the projects he's worked on as a staff member at CRA and talk about the life of a "shovel bum" more generally.