Okay, here we go,
After several aeons searching for a background, one has been chosen which will probably be changed again.
I suppose this will a place where I can just write things, things being the operative word, as I suspect the subject will change quite considerably.
At the moment I'm just pondering university. Specifically where I would like to specialise in the coming years. It's almost as if I expect, and others expect, that we will all go down the route of prehistory. (I'm an undergraduate archaeologist, incase you don't know.) Prehistory is the bread and butter of archaeology, it's what has made it famous, where much of the research is going, and honestly, why it isn't still a subset of history for people who can't stand to sit inside looking at books all day (something I ironically spend much of my time doing when I'm not distracted by the everpresent threat of the computer).
I will elaborate, rather than continue to digress.
When I left school and started college, doing archaeology, a subject I had been drawn to after its entry in a college prospectus, possibly as an escape for what looked like a depressing previous career choice - journalism - after spending a year studying it.
So being the unknowing soul I was, and most probably still am. I read whatever took my fancy. Egypt. Egypt was what took my fancy back then, I remember romantic images in my head of my future career. Mistake Number One.
For those of you who don't know, Ancient Egypt is studied as an entrely seperate discipline to Archaeology. You can't do training excavations in Egypt full stop. You need to complete a 5 year course to work there.
Reality Check Number One.
After much belligerency (don't even know if that is the right word), my interest faded from that. We were study in 'Religion and Ritual in Prehistoric Europe at College, half a year's worth of it. My mind changed. Trips to Orkney in my first year, and later Wessex ensured I had a sound knowledge of what was out there, (and there is a lot).
And yet after all of this there was still one subject stuck in my mind that had been there since primary school. In as much as a child can really research history, that was what I had done, way back. I remember being embarrassed (who knows why) when my teacher mentioned it to me at computer club after school one day. I had enjoyed studying them so much that a year later there were still in my brain and I wanted to find out more.
Perhaps it was the concept itself, I'm sure most people will agree that it's a firm starting block. I honestly can't remember, but, as I said earlier, one group in history had been at the back of my mind throughout primary and secondary school, even though I hadn't (and probably won't) study them again. It was part of a much broader cultural interest, which I would say culminated in my failed attempt to try to learn a language at the start of this academic year. The thing that got my childhood self so excited. Vikings.
Part 2 Soon Enough will follow. It's 1am. Yeh...erm...yeh.
