pears

I've kept every book I've purchased for classes since starting my M.A., & I've gotten a solid few related to my thesis work + general areas of interest. I kept a small handful of undergrad books, & if I couldn't sell one of the rest back, I'd pass it down to someone else. I am a total book hoarder, thanks to my mom's career (she works for a publishing company). I regret nothing.

Couldn't agree more! I swear by that book. If it can't give you the answer you're looking for, it will probably lead you to it.

As a Giants fan, I have to be a smug jerk say thanks for the new OC (who will probably be a bit of a QB coach, too, so hooray for Eli!).. but, that said, we might be losing Nicks, whom I'm a big fan of. Derp. As my S.O. put it: "thanks for being really good, okay bye" Back to food, though: lentils! Lentils are the best. Mujaddara is an awesome veggie meal that's pretty quick, & there are lots of potential variations of it, too.

Preach. I'm super short, & my hips are pretty wide relative to my frame, so.. you can guess where most of the 25 pounds I've gained in the last 5 years have gone. Blergh. To be fair, when I first entered college, I was nearly underweight (i.e., a pound or two away), & I didn't drink + was super athletically active in high school. Drinking & one sport took over, & I put on 10 pounds my first two years. I put on another 10 my junior year when I lived abroad & was completely sedentary. The other 5 were a slow creep after graduating. That said, I've been returning to healthy eating & exercise recently -- living with my S.O. who loves pizza & beer made me lose all self-restraint.. whoops -- & I've noticed that the first 5 pounds have left my face & my stomach first. Hmm. I'm hoping to lose another 10-15 pounds; the number depends on what I feel the best at, I guess. I am definitely a stress eater with a horrible sweet tooth, but a pescatarian one at that who has a really hard time eating fatty & dairy-rich foods, so I guess it's self-limiting that way. If I don't literally write in exercising & cooking into my schedule, it's easy to let it all slip. I've noticed that switching from drinking a beer or two daily & eating greasy/lazy foods to fewer beers, clean + home-cooked food, & exercise has done my sleep schedule & appetite some noticeable good already. I'm not so sluggish in the mornings (even without coffee right away), & I feel more full with less food, & don't crave snacks as often. Hooray, fiber & nutrients!

Hmm, that's a really interesting question actually. My focus is in mortuary archaeology, so I'm an arch/bioarch fence-sitter of sorts. Admittedly, I have a big ol' soft spot for theory: learning about theories, debating theories, critiquing them, & so forth. It's amazing how much overlap with philosophy (of science, among other things) there can be. My two first thoughts were Michelle Hegmon, who's at ASU, & Ian Hodder, who's at Stanford. Hegmon coined the idea of "processual-plus" theory, that is, the blending of processual & post-processual theory that seems to be en vogue in American archaeology. I'm interested to see where the whole processual-plus perspective goes, & there are many thoughtful critiques & criticisms of it out there, namely from scholars who lean in the feminist and Marxist direction — that is, theories that make a point of examining something specific in its own right (women/gender, economics/social struggle) & are also politically charged. Hodder is very much a post-processualist, so I'm not sure he's quite on the cutting edge of theory anymore, but he is a theoretical heavy-hitter f'sho. I now Barb Voss is also at Stanford, & she does some cool theoretically-bent work on ethnogenesis & gender in archaeology. Not sure what the rest of the Stanford faculty is like. Pretty good timing, actually: I had a reading-based discussion in a seminar today about the role of ontology in anthropology, which seems to be a very new niche of interest, but a super interesting one (to me, at least!). Martin Holbraad, who's at UCL, came up often, as did Severin Fowles, who's at Columbia through Barnard College. Columbia's faculty has lots of familiar names for me that rang a "theory!" bell in my brain, but I think most are cultural in focus. Hmm. Otherwise, the other names that came up belong to people who are in Denmark, Brasil, & other places where language may be a barrier. The link that clicking Holbraad's name leads to may offer other people, too! Theory is so, so broad, even in archaeology alone.. it just depends on what kind of theory you're interested in, I guess. Not sure how helpful I was, but, as I said, I love all kinds of theory chitchat, so I'm interested to see what other names & programs pop up!

Hmm, this is a tricky situation. When you say you don't like your department or campus culture, do you mean your home program, the one you're at now, or both? Either way, it sounds like you're in a really tough spot, so I do hope you find your second wind, wherever it takes you. Personally, I would press through the final months, but I'm so stubborn I make mules seem easygoing. In your situation, however, it sounds like the chance to start over in a new place with a new thesis topic that you're more passionate about could really be the boost you need, if you're still set on completing an MA. Have you looked into other programs, especially in terms of transferring credits? It would be a shame (& possibly a pain in the rump) to have to start from square one on coursework.

I think you may have better luck posting in the Engineering forum, which you can find here (click for hyperlink). Sorry I can't be of more help than that!

I actually didn't see it as a negative, as long as there's continuity between what you'd be doing in the MA program & what you would want to do in a PhD program. It totally depends on the coursework, though. If you can focus your classes on all things anthropological, rather than, say, political science, it could be a great advantage if you intend to keep your focus on Latin American things, since you'd have a solid foundation in that specific area of study than others who are coming from a more general 4-field background might not. That said, if the coursework component of the degree is pretty inflexible, it could be problematic, just because it might veer away from anthropology (although I think a socioculturally focused thesis could make up for that.. but what do I know!).

When it comes to conversations, it's all about the code-switching. I'm using that term in the popular sense, i.e., changing between registers, if you can call "academic-speak" a register.. I guess it could be considered style-switching, too, because it's just as much about where your mind is at as it is the people you're surrounded by. Anyway, the way I speak in class is very different from the way I speak to classmates in casual settings, & the way I speak to professors varies with respect to the setting as well as whom I'm speaking with. Your setting, your state of mind, & whom you're talking to or with should play a big role in how you speak & act. I know a lot of my classmates are the same way, & we have to laugh about it: mid-week, we're all scholarly & polite, talking about theory & philosophy, but come Friday, we're putting down beers & colorful language goes flying. So, in that sense, having an awareness of how your spoken language & body language should change from setting to setting &/or from person to person is really helpful. I learned how to navigate the differences through work experiences, mostly, & it's really come in handy in grad school so far.

As you are stating your own personal experience, I, too, am stating mine, as well as my interpretation (& apparently dstock's as well) of what you said. Regardless of whether my experiences or interpretations were correct, your follow-up post put me on the defensive, & I felt a need to explain my downvote. My apologies for the misinterpretation; as I'm sure you know, there is an extant, unfavorable stereotype of women who drink wine, as well as the assumption that all women are concerned with calories & carbohydrates to the degree it affects what they drink. I took your post to be an allusion to that, although you did not mention it explicitly, & that was my mistake. I see no need to fling around so many insulting words for that.

I have no problem with your word choice, & I'm sure I'm not alone in that. There's no need to mill around posting with an antagonistic "ooh, look, I'm doing the trolling!" attitude, either. The issue, of course, is the assumption "[they]'ve got to be the biggest chick beer lover [you]'ve ever come into contact with." I find it very hard to believe that you have yet to encounter more than a few women who prefer to drink anything besides wine, &/or who have a strong working knowledge of all types of beer. Just like some dudes are all about wine or vodka, some chicks are all about beer or whiskey, & neither one is that unusual. Basically, gender doesn't articulate perfectly — or even very well at all, for that matter — with drinking choices.

For those who live near a Safeway, the Safeway Select brand has epic veggie potstickers. They're on the salty side, but are actually pretty nutritious if you have an otherwise low-salt diet: no cholesterol, good fiber & protein, good vitamin A & iron (some calcium & vitamin C, too). I fry mine in avocado oil, which is expensive, but is a good clean frying oil with a high smoke point, & is easier to find than ghee. Om nom nom!

what. WHAT. I just had a fangirl 'splosion. I'm probably gonna send you a PM at some point about them (sorry in advance)!

academia.edu is another great resource for finding papers & professors. From the folks I follow, here are some ideas: • Ryan Harrod at University of Alaska - Anchorage: specializes in the bioarchaeology of violence, mostly, over a few regions. He just got his PhD from UNLV under Dr. Martin, so he's probably had great & up-to-date training. Bit of a gamble, though, as he's apparently the only bioarch-focused faculty member there. • Deb Martin at University of Nevada - Las Vegas: not surprisingly, she also focuses on the bioarchaeology of violence, as well as social inequality. She's done work in Sudanese Nubia, & is doing work now in the SW US & NW Mexico. • USF: in general, they have a really strong bioanthropology department. One of the department's "research themes" is the "biocultural dimensions of human health & illness." Besides the physical/bio folks (Himmelgreen, Kimmerle, Madrigal, & Miller), there are a few medical anthropologist staff members who focus on the same area. If I weren't dead-set on never returning to the East Coast, I would totally put in an app for their PhD program down the road. • Sabrina Agarwal at University of California - Berkeley: one of my big nerd idols! She does cross-cultural comparative studies about the intersections of age, sex, & gender with bone frailty & maintenance, & how they contribute to the embodiment of social identities. • Chris Stojanowski & Kelly Knudson at Arizona State University: my other big nerd idols (it's kind of embarrassing how badly I want to work with them down the road for a PhD, hah!). They do a lot of collaborative work about embodiment of social identities; Dr. Knudson is an expert of all things stable isotope analysis, & Dr. Stojanowski has done work on morphometrics & dental analysis in the SE US & the Sahara. Unfortunately (sort of), most of these people are total academic superstars (read: I'm not the only one who covets the chance to work with them) &/or the programs are competitive. Still, check out their CVs - hopefully at least one of them will be of interest to you!

Agreed with sarab - well said! When I was deciding between my top 2 choices, the second, third, & seventh questions really cleared things up for me.

Holy whoa! Congrats!!

Mmm, bourbon & scotch. Also, it's funny that cider + Guinness = snakebite for you; I drank them regularly when I lived in Australia, & it was always cider with raspberry or some kind of current cordial/liqueur on top. I'd probably find them too sweet now, but that's how I came to love good, dry or dark ciders anyway.

Agreed! & if we're "entitled" & "lazy," I'd hate to see what these armchair social pundits will be calling the kids born from the late 90s through.. well, now, pretty much. Lord knows I don't have too many nice things to say about them!

Elysian has a jasmine IPA (hardly hoppy at all) which is faintly sweet. 21st Amendment has a beer called Allies Win the War! which is flavored with dates, and it's a darker, stronger beer. Shandy beers (really, beers with soft drink added) have very fruity flavors; Leinenkugel has a Lemon Berry Shandy, an Orange Shandy, a Berry Weiss, & a Summer Shandy, which are all relatively sweet - too sweet for me. Pumpkin beers (Smuttynose has a great one), lambics, & wheat beers (witbier, hefeweizen, weisse, etc.) are generally lighter, sweeter beers, too.

FaultyPowers: I'd interpret that at a sign that committees are meeting & thoroughly considering applicants' materials. It's a busy time of year for departments — midterms, applications, funding, conferences, etc. — so that may explain the silence there. Also, professors (& therefore admin. staff?) may prefer not to be in touch with applicants while they're undergoing review until they have a decision. That would explain why all of your materials have been accessed somehow, & the silence, too.

I'm not normally a stout drinker (I prefer hoppy beers), but Old Rasputin, a Russian Imperial Stout out of the North Coast Brewing Co. in California, is really tasty. I'm not sure how widely distributed it is, but I found it here in Missoula, MT, so it shouldn't be too limited.

Yes, unfortunately, although I forget why/how it's permissible; I had two places that wanted a decision from me by the third week of March last year. I'm guessing places would be understanding about an extension, though!