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+--- Thread: why can't I just find some work? (/showthread.php?tid=5045)
why can't I just find some work? - Doug - 26th July 2013
P Prentice Wrote:doug. both these statements, however well-meaning, fall very short of making sense. whilst i can see why you think they are worth saying i have a couple of minutes in port.
the first is a great advert for bajr and his excellent forum but has no bearing on fact or even statistics
the second is a fallacy as any idiot can ask a question ...........
P Prentice- your statements, however well-meaning, took too narrow an interpretation of what I was saying and falls well short of making sense (
me having fun with your words, not being a dick, as forums can sometimes make me seem). I said asking questions and talking with people not asking questions on BAJR and talking(?) with people on BAJR. Learning should not be limited to just BAJR, even though it is a great place to learn. As for facts and stats- they did an informal survey in the US of archaeologists (survey monkey- passed around a forum like this). I good portion of people got their jobs by luck (it plays an important part) but an even great number of archaeologists got jobs through contacts. So I would say talking with people is the greatest way to land a job in archaeology. Mind you it was informal and in the US but I bet we run a survey here and a lot of people will say that they got an arch job through contacts. How does one make contacts?
As for the second, it is a fallacy as anyone can point out a person can ask questions........
Now that my fun is done, I think wax makes the point I was trying to say, though failed to fully articulate as you have rightly pointed out.
why can't I just find some work? - kevin wooldridge - 27th July 2013
I think I'd concur with Doug's premise.....all my jobs since 2006 have come either through BAJR ads, social networking, contacts made at conference/symposium or friends....4 countries, 7 universities, 3 NGOs, a couple of commercial companies, 3 private individuals....Talking to friends and colleagues, I don't think my recent history is much different to many other peoples experience ...
why can't I just find some work? - Dinosaur - 27th July 2013
I'd concur, I've not bothered maintaining what any potential employer would recognise as a proper CV since sometime in the '80s, once I realised that people were either phoning me up or that it just seemed to appear from nowhere (i.e. luck). The trick is just to get your foot in the door in the first place and become known as someone worth employing. When we need a crew around here we just phone up the usual suspects padded out with people that we've heard are any good, so all a bit word-of-mouth. People who are known to be good site staff (and that's the trick, being known) get the jobs. Qualifications, IFA membership etc are irrelevent. I've worked with plenty of PhDs/MIFAs/whatever who, if the world worked properly, would have had restraining orders taken out against them preventing them going anywhere within 100m of a trowel/shovel/site
why can't I just find some work? - Dinosaur - 27th July 2013
Unitof1 Wrote:Out of interest...have you got any science "A" levels.
Interesting question, love it when Unit throws in a curved-ball :face-approve:
Are there any figures out there on 'science' qualifications amongst the non-academic archaeological profession? Anecdotally (and in large part based on what gets written on context sheets) there seems to be a general lack of understanding of even quite basic concepts at a site level (think I've commented on here before about one person who seemed to have missed the obvious fact that water generally flows downhill), and hardly anyone these days seems capable of reducing a level if their mobile phone is flat (doing it in yer head's a lot quicker!)...and I seem to spend my life explaining to people what a C14 calibration curve represents (no, it's not a squiggly line, it's the margin of a probability distribution plot, the important bit's the area under the line - o-level stuff). I'm still dealing with the aftermath of a PO who didn't see the point of soil-samples...
Is it just me or does there seem to be a rather low level of usage of 'archaeological science' at a site level these days? Almost all the published stuff seems to come from 'academic' projects. If this is so, is it due to ignorance of what is possible (at a PO level) or cost-cutting?
Discuss
[until BAJR notices and sticks up a :face-topic:
]
why can't I just find some work? - monty - 27th July 2013
If you choose archaeology you choose poverty, uncertainty and no hope of buying property etc......don't ! Do something else instead !
why can't I just find some work? - kevin wooldridge - 27th July 2013
monty Wrote:If you choose archaeology you choose poverty, uncertainty and no hope of buying property etc......don't ! Do something else instead !
You forgot no hope of ever paying off the student loan!!...but if one thing has changed since 2008, its how many other jobs now fall under the same conditions that used to simply categorise archaeology!! And did I mention student loan?
why can't I just find some work? - BAJR - 27th July 2013
Quote:[until BAJR notices and sticks up a :face-topic:
I saw that... but ...well... tis good enough for me to turn a blind eye
why can't I just find some work? - Kel - 27th July 2013
kevin wooldridge Wrote:You forgot no hope of ever paying off the student loan!!...but if one thing has changed since 2008, its how many other jobs now fall under the same conditions that used to simply categorise archaeology!! And did I mention student loan?But one of the selling points of the student loan, is that many people (archaeological or not) will never earn enough to reach the repayment threshold. OK for those taking it out these days, where anything remaining is wiped out after 30 years (until the government decide to change the terms and conditions so they can sell off the loan book to a commercial enterprise of course). I'm likely to carry mine to the grave, whether or not I ever get paid to do commercial archaeology.
Now I think that definitely deserves a :face-topic: notice!
why can't I just find some work? - kevin wooldridge - 28th July 2013
I wouldn't dispute the terms that the current student loan is offered at (although I take Kel's point that the government could change those terms at any time)...what I was thinking about was going to the bank to ask for a mortgage when your main 'selling point' was 'I am never going to earn enough to pay off my student loan'.....it hardly makes a good advert for acquiring a housing loan as well.....
why can't I just find some work? - Kel - 28th July 2013
kevin wooldridge Wrote:I was thinking about was going to the bank to ask for a mortgage when your main 'selling point' was 'I am never going to earn enough to pay off my student loan'.....it hardly makes a good advert for acquiring a housing loan as well.....It's a fair point, but again, that's not just archaeology students - that's across the board. The whole system's screwed up. I don't believe that archaeology students are any more or less screwed (in that respect at least) than any other.