Archeology has a surprising amount of global skills that are applicable in many situations. Calling an archeological internship opportunity a “vacation” is at best counterproductive. It might be true that the work was fulfilling and Turkey is an amazing place, with beautiful scenery and interesting culture; however, work was not easy, it was physically demanding, and required that we learn and train in many techniques and work ethics you will need in any workspace.
The most important thing to take from this experience is a heavy amount of team working skills. It is imperative that one learns to work along with others in an archeological excavation, as it is almost impossible to work and dig an entire area on your own. Additionally, there is a lot of value in learning to listen to others, most of the time it takes multiple sets of eyes to understand and analyze what has been uncovered in order to fit the newly acquired information into the big puzzle that is an excavation.
Furthermore, as previously mentioned, an archeological excavation is a big puzzle, there are countless pieces and each new information uncovered just adds to it. Problem-solving skills are essential to this part of the work, as for the most part, the new information is not only out of place, but also misleading. To interpret and properly apply it is difficult and can have terrible consequences for the overall interpretation of history if done wrong.