#cambodian archaeology

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Hi Everyone, 

So I feel as though now is a good time in the year/my life to give an update on how things are going. There’s been a lot of good and a lot of meh over the last few months, and I think it’s worth writing it all down. Here I’ll talk a bit about my Master’s Degree, my fieldwork in Cambodia, my mental state, my next year, and PhD plans. 

Where I am in my Master’s Degree: MSc in Archaeological Information Systems, England

It’s currently term 3, the final term for my degree in England. Classes are finished and we are fully in dissertation mode. I finished all of my coursework with a first (Above a 70 average/ equivalent to an A in the US), with scores of 68, 69, 75, and 78. The general consensus of international students in this program is that the grading system seems to be unproductive and could be greatly improved. This is mostly due to the fact that the grade you receive for a module is entirely based on a single 3500-word essay, and all other coursework conducted throughout the term is not worth anything. There’s a lot more I can say about this if anyone is interested. 

I will be writing my dissertation on an archaeological region in Cambodia called Sambor Prei Kuk. This research will involve a lidar analysis of the hydraulic network of the region. There has not been much remote sensing analysis conducted in this area yet, so there is a lot of potential for this research to expand. I’m personally not too worried about the word count for this dissertation (~20,000words/ ~80 pages), however, the climate for writing it has been generally stressful especially in its early stages. 

Fieldwork in Cambodia

In late March/Early April I spent 3 weeks in Cambodia to co-direct a field survey of Sambor Prei Kuk. The first two weeks consisted of pretty tiring and hot days. We would wake up around 7am daily for breakfast and then head into the field around 8am. Around noon-2pm we would end the field day due to heat. Most days involved driving to the remote site locations via truck on bumpy roads, walking through forested areas being swarmed by red ants that bite, and being covered in sweat and grime. They also involved locating previously unrecorded temple sites, interacting with the local people and their culture, and creating some great networking relationships. 

During this period I received word that I had been chosen to complete a 10-month long research Fulbright in Cambodia starting in September 2019. This was incredible news and helped to establish what I would be doing for the following year. This news, however, also brought with it realizations that I would not be able to go home for another year, would have to end a relationship with my current partner, and would have to start over again in terms of friendships and finding comfort in a country where I don’t speak the language.

PhD Programs  

While writing my dissertation over the next couple months, I will also be contacting PhD advisors and applying to programs. I’ve decided that I will be returning to the US for my PhD. This will be another 7+ years of school after a year of research in Cambodia. I’ve already accepted the fact that I am willingly selling my soul to academia for the rest of my life. Fingers are crossed for my top 3 schools, which have so far been successful in establishing positive communication about the programs. If I don’t get into my top, I will likely take a year off to regroup and re-apply for the following year. 

Mental State

Mentally, I feel like I consistently have a pretty heavy blanket of stress on me at all times.

In my personal life, it’s been difficult not seeing my family for so long in addition to not really knowing when I’ll be able to see them in the future. Dating has also been difficult because I know that I will never be in one place longer than a year at a time, so establishing healthy relationships has been a struggle. My friends here in England are incredible and I’m grateful for them every day, and their presence has eased a lot of the mental strain that is inherent with academia. 

In my academic life, I feel like there is never an opportunity to take a break and breathe, and it doesn’t look like there will be a break any time soon. I recognize that I’m very privileged and lucky to be in this position, and I know that looking back on it years from now will be a positive experience.

I’ve recently been told that the more success you acquire, the more sacrifices you have to make. I’ve definitely been feeling the effect of this in the last few weeks. 

Conclusion

On paper, my life is pretty great and opportunities for success are plentiful at the moment. I have the opportunity to study in England, do research in Cambodia, and get to continue research in a field that I love. 
Mentally, however, I’m quite tired.  

I hope you all are doing well <3 

-Lyss

Well this year was a doozy if I don’t say so myself. But we survived it, and its okay if that’s all you were able to do this year because that’s enough. 

As an offical 18th grader, I feel like I can speak pretty well to the toxicity of the academic environment. There is always a pressure to be working all of the time, people compete with each other with how few hours of sleep they got, every conversation with fellow students is just listing off all of the different assignemnts you have to do by the end of the week. On top of all of this, this is 2020. So, I decided that this year I’m going to give myself some mental slack. 

I decided that this is the year that I’m not going to try to impress anyone. I’m just going to survive and do what I have to do to move onto the next term. I think I did a pretty good job at that for the first term, so I’ll share a bit about what I observed in myself and those in my cohort.

Coming into term one having to choose classes, many of my peers were packing their schedules full of 5 Unit seminars. For those who don’t know, theoretically, a 5 Unit course is supposed to take about 5-6 hours of work outside of class hours. For Stanford Anthropology, most PhD students take as close as they can to 18 credits, and anything over that you have to pay extra for the courses. Taking more courses doesn’t really put you any further ahead in terms of completing your degree, and you’re expected to complete about 45 Units each year for the first two years of the program. 

I decided to take 2 seminars (typical), a language course, and a couple filler credits that we are given the option to use if we need 1-3 units to hit 18 total. I,  fortunately, tracked every hour spent outside of the classroom working on each course usingtoggl (i highly reccomend): 

In a typical week, I spent about 5-6 hours/week outside of class on my Anthro seminars, and about 6-7 hours on Japanese. Japanese was a “for-fun” class so I would usually study more of that when I didn’t feel like reading dense archaeological theory. 

Toggl was a really cool way to see where I was spending too much, or not enough, time on my classwork. If it was taking me more than 1.5 hours to get through a single article, I knew I was probably spending too much time on it and should move on to the next thing. My goal for the term was to stay true to the 5 Unit idea of 5-6 hours, and not over-work myself. 

Toggl was also useful in tracking my mental health throughout the term, as it is very obvious to see when I just was not physically capable of ingesting 400 pages of reading. For example, election week:

Election week was really hard for me, and everyone else in the world honestly. I had various family things I was dealing with, typical existential dread, plus it was week 8-ish of the term when everything was already on fire in terms of workload. For one of my seminars (purple), we had to read a book for the following week which I was able to do the sundar after election day. However, for the days leading up to and surrounding the 4th, the only thing I could mentally handle was mindless Japanese vocab studying. One of my seminars really sufferend this week, and I straight up just didnt show up to the smaller Anth 310G class because I had only read the title of the pdf. Fortunately, I emailed my professor of my Theory class and was like “yo dude I cannot” and he replied that he understood and wouldnt call on me during that day of class. 

I didn’t do a whole lot of journalling at all this term, but for this week I just wrote “pain” on most days and then YAY BIDEN at the end of it. 

Weekly Schedule

Above is what a typical week looked like, some were a lot lot lot more dense, others not so much, but this was pretty average. Not all things on the calendar are work related, some are extra lectures from visiting professors that sounded interesting, or “Free Boba & Snacks Pick Up” put on by my residence. Monday, Wednesday, and Sunday were my big work days last term, where I didn’t have a whole lot of classes so I would do most of my reading then. On Tues and Thurs I had one 3-hour seminar, and M-F I had a 50 min Japanese class. 

I woke up every day around 7am-ish, made a green tea, and sat at the computer to work, filter through emails, etc. On particularily open days I would go grocery shopping, go for bike rides/walks around campus, go buy food/boba. 

On class-heavy days, I wouldn’t leave my computer for 8-12 hours, which is extremely ridiculous but that’s the new norm in school in 2020. This kind of stunk because all of the socializing was also on the computer, so even if I wasn’t working I was doing screen related things. 

EVERY day I stopped working at 6pm. Rarely did I do readings past 6pm unless I was really slacking somewhere. From 6pm onwards I would do things like play Among Us or League of Legends with my discord friends, eat, watch movies with my partner, etc. And then most nights I would try to be in bed by 12am at the latest. 

Social Life

Despite the online nature of things this term, I was suprisingly able to meet a lot of great people on campus. We were all being tested at least once a week, which made in person gatherings with 1-4 people a little less scary, especially when half of the people lived together in one household. 

In the first week of school, some of the grad programs put on a “speed friending” zoom event, where I was able to connect with two people really well. We ended up doing a “slow-friending” zoom event afterwards and then created a FB group chat and added all of the people we had met into it. The group ended up being about 15 people, and we would message the group for park hangouts, going to get food, or going on walks on campus. We also had a huge get together in a park for Mid-Autumn Festival, where we sat in a socially distanced circle, chatted, and ate mooncakes. 

Most of my socializing came from my online friends, and amongus was a huge savior to my mental health this term wher emy group would play literally every night. I also made a really good friend off of Bumble BFF this term, who I’ve hung out with a good amount for plant shopping and board games. 

I’m very fortunate to be in a situation where I can get tested for COVID on a days notice, and very grateful that I could use that to stay a little sane. 

My Biggest Accomplishment this term, was not school related. but instead I hit my 365 DAY STREAK on duolingo. This was celebrated with cake. This streak has lived through literal hell and for that I am very proud. 

Overall reflection:

This term was super rough, there were a lot of days where I just napped through it and a lot of days where I couldn’t bring myself to do any work. However, I think the courseload that I took was very manageable and I’m going to continue to go light on myself in that regard. 

I really liked the boundaries that I set for myself this term, not working after 6pm and making time to do some fun things in the midst of chaos. I never felt like I was too far behind on work, or that I wasn’t doing enough, because I had a literal reminder in front of me that I had already put x amount of hours into something with toggl. 

Sometimes in class I would feel like I didn’t know how to productively contribute to conversation, but I think thats a skill that will get better over time and not being so great at it should especially be expected in the first term of a program.

Socially I met a lot of wonderful people who also made me feel more comfortable will myself. I started using She/They pronouns which feel really comforting to me. I made a lot of little origami cranes every time I was feeling sad. I drank a lot of boba. Watched a lot of She Ra. Played a lot of games. It all ended up being okay despite the weight of everything around me. 

I’m proud of all of you for making it through this year, I know it was really difficult for a lot of people in more ways than it was for me, but we’re still here! Sometimes all you can do it make it to the next day and thats such a big accomplishment on its own. 

Please feel free to reach out with any questions about time-management, toggl, phd stuff in general, archaeology, etc! Always happy to help out. :’)

Thanks for reading!

Lyss