Life in the Bone Lab

One of the things that I do to gain experience in physical anthropology and work with people in the field is volunteering in the campus bioarchaeology lab. In the lab, I do skeletal analysis of juvenile individuals, and, as of late, re-assembled teeth and laid them out in order. (Which is a lot harder when they are baby teeth and in four or five different pieces.

In the lab I work under a graduate student who is using the research done in the lab in her Ph.D. dissertation. While we're working, we talk about anthropology-related topics (like grad school), life and how busy we all are, and listen to music while we work on the bones. However, even though it's a casual atmosphere and the person running the lab is only a grad student (opposed to an Associate or Assistant Professor, or someone with tenure who is well-known in the field), working in the lab still requires a form of professionalism in order to demonstrate the level of seriousness that I bring to the field.

I do this by following three rules. First, I go to the lab every day that I am scheduled. The graduate student relies on the undergraduate volunteers to help with the basic research like inventory, epiphyseal union, and metrics in order to speed the research process along. If the undergraduate students don't show up, not only does the graduate student have to do more work, but in addition, it shows that the undergraduate students may not be as serious about the research part of the field as they should be. Plus, the undergraduate students would miss out on experiences in the lab that could help them in the field of physical anthropology as an upperclass undergraduate or a graduate student.

Second, if there is a case where I am unable to go to the lab, I make sure to send the graduate student an email about why I am unable to attend. These cases usually involve a meeting with an advisor or being called into work during the day. In cases where I am required to go to a meeting, I try to go to the lab during the time when the meeting is not held so that I can at least get an hour or two in before I have to leave. Sometimes, like every student, my workload is heavier than normal. If this happens, similar to how I work when I have meetings, I attempt to go to the lab for an hour or two, then leave slightly early in order to do my work. In order to make up for these hours/days, I volunteer to come in and help out if I am particularly free one week or have a class canceled that would otherwise prevent me from being in the lab.

Finally, while I work in the lab, I volunteer for as many "extras" as possible, such working with teeth. Even if I'm not doing any actual analysis of the teeth, I still gain experience putting them together, and over time, I recognize certain things that can help me determine where a certain piece would fit. I can explain this by using a puzzle as an example. When you have a puzzle, if the piece has an edge on one side, you know it's a side piece, while puzzle pieces with two edges are corner pieces. If a tooth has a pointed edge, I know it's a canine. But, if the tooth has a cusp, then it is a molar. In addition to gaining experience and learning what you like and don't like about the lab, volunteering to help out with more advanced stuff demonstrates initiative, which can never hurt in a competitive field like physical anthropology.