The employment climate was about the same as it is now when I graduated (piss poor), so I enlisted in the Army. My advisor was pissed I didn't go straight to grad school. With hindsight, he was right. I eventually drifted into a career as a field archaeologist, and through a combination of perseverance and inertia, have been at it for twenty years now. I have topped out in my profession, and face competition by entry level grads such as yourself who work cheaper, or find myself in competition with recent Master's graduates. 95% don't make it this far. Your potential employers are academia, which you reject, the government, for which you realistically need post graduate education, or possibly the cultural resource management industry. Or you can compete in business with all the other liberal arts majors. I'm sorry if this sounds like cold comfort, but it is a competitive job market. BA's are the new HS diplomas. If you have any interest in archaeology, I recommend this site for more info: http://www.archaeologyfieldwork.com/AFW It's run by a friend that used to work for me. Whatever you decide to do, follow your passion, and best of luck!

I've been leaning towards the archivist/preservation end of the social sciences for quite some time now, and archaeology is actually looking like a pretty interesting field to get into.

If you don't mind me asking, what was your average day at work there when you were entry-level?

7AM - meet out in the motel parking lot near the interstate, exchange insults, I mean greetings, with the rest of the hung over crew and pile into the van to ride to the work area.

7:30AM - Arrive at the work area, grab shovels, screens, and the rest of your equipment, pair off, and start testing your assigned transects.

7:30- 10 AM - Dig a small hole, screen the soil, collect the artifacts (if any), write up the results, walk 30 meters, repeat, taking turns digging and screening.

10 - 10:15AM - morning break - maybe gather and play hacky sack.

10:15 - noon - same

noon - 12:30PM - lunch in the field - you brought lunch, right?

12:30 - 2PM - same

2 - 2:15 - Afternoon break - more hacky sack?

2:15 - 4PM - same

4 - 4:30 Return to van, equipment maintenance, packing, turn in forms and artifacts, pile into van, try not to touch dirty and sweaty coworkers on way back to motel.

5PM-7AM - drink, eat, maybe bathe or sleep. Fornicate if fortunate.

There can be infinite variety on the schedule depending on the project and supervisor, as to whether your drive time to and/or from the field is paid time or not, if you get to a restaurant or gas station for lunch, etc. Also on good projects, known as Phase II or III's in the East, on already known sites, you get to dig large square holes, and find and record cool stuff if you are lucky. Rookies don't get many of those jobs because you got to pay your dues, but sometimes you get lucky.

I worked mostly east of the Mississippi. I understand out West they just wander around and record GPS positions when they stub their toes on something, but you need special training for that...



I won the first DU photo contest I entered with this shot of one of my crews at work in NY a few years ago.

He works for the NY State Assembly. (In a partisan position, on the conservative side of the aisle) Not really directly tied to his field but they hired him for his research experience, understanding of systems of categorization and willingness to spend hours doing very-dry book-research. The skills that go into obtaining an anthropology degree are valuable to a lot of fields not directly-related to anthropology. There's a lot of anthropology people in DC working on the Hill or for think-tanks for the same reason.

Technically my major is literally called "liberal arts" -- at the school I go to (which is now best known for one of the students who flunked out and went berserk, rather than for any of its graduates) you choose two concentrations, one in humanities and one in social sciences (sort of a "double-major lite&quot . The rest of the credits are filler electives, or you can choose a minor. (Why history is called a "humanities" major in college when throughout K-12 it comes under "social studies" is beyond me.)

Anywho, my concentrations are history and anthropology as well. They seemed the best option for a smooth transfer of my gen-ed credits from a community college. But the first thing that comes to mind when I think of careers from this major sure isn't think tanks. It's the usual word-association with anything related to "liberal arts": namely, burger-flipping or toilet-scrubbing. I don't have the option to move for my employment, because 1) I don't have a job and can't afford a car (let alone insurance), and 2) rare is the employer these days willing to pay for you to relocate. Kind of a catch-22 with the car thing: I need a job to pay for a car but need a car to get to a job. (I sadly live at home, with a family that -- to quote Baby-O in Con Air, "makes the Manson Family look like the Partridge Family" -- and mom drives me into school.)

If it doesn't violate board rules, I wonder if you could mention what age-range you're in. Age is certainly a factor in job search (isn't everything?). I'm 27, will graduate at 28 if I keep up the pace I'm at now. But nobody worth their salt (their ketchup and sweet-and-sour sauce, maybe) is going to hire a 28-year-old first-timer who doesn't even have babysitting on her resume. I figure there's no hope of me getting a good job because I'm already considered too old, at least to be a first-timer with zippo real-world experience and a crappy degree. I have ruled out grad school because 1) I don't have the energy and 2) I don't care enough about my field to pursue further study in it, and I don't want to teach either. Right now all I'm looking to do once I graduate is to get a front desk job at some office. That way at least I'm earning some money and can at least apply for housing assistance on the grounds that I don't make enough to afford real rent. The military would not be a good fit for someone like me. Fear of getting shot and all.

The first replier is right: sadly, there really isn't much you can do with a "personal enrichment" degree unless you are willing to go to grad school and/or become a teacher in that field. Employers use keyword databases to screen out the "undesirable" majors on resumes, and there's no way Congress would ever sound alarms about this, because that would mean big, nasty ol' government encroaching on private business. I guess I wouldn't mind working retail as long as it was in a small shop and not at the big chains, especially when the Running of the Bulls starts -- I mean, the holiday shopping rush.