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My professor said I was digging wrong for 2 years before I finally listened
Dr. Morrison from the Arizona field school kept telling me to use a trowel edge instead of the flat side when scraping layers. I thought she was just being picky until I accidentally cut through a 1300 year old pot rim at the Coyote Creek site. She was right the whole time and now I feel like an idiot for wasting all that dirt and time. Has anyone else had a supervisor correct a basic technique that made everything click later?
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piper7793mo ago
Man, that sinking feeling when you realize they were right all along is the worst. I've definitely been there with a few of my own stubborn fieldwork mistakes.
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finley_gonzalez493mo ago
Three days of driving through brush and swatting gnats is what it took me to finally admit the old timer was right about the shortcut through the gulch. I had to learn the hard way that my shortcut added an extra five miles of sticker bushes and dead ends. Why do we always have to burn our own time before we listen to someone who already blazed the trail? Maybe it's just part of the deal with fieldwork, you gotta earn your own scars.
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mia7002mo ago
Tbh piper779, that "sinking feeling" part hit me hard. What worked for me was I started keeping a little field notebook where I'd jot down the advice I ignored and then later had to learn the hard way. Now when someone tells me something that seems off, I'll write it down and promise myself I'll check back after I finish my own way. It's not perfect but it stops me from making the same dumb mistakes twice. I also started asking more questions upfront like "what happened when you tried my way instead?" instead of just assuming I knew better. That little shift helped me skip a few of those sticker bush detours you mentioned.
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