My experience here has been quite eye-opening for a couple of reasons. I hadn’t been exposed to the actual practices of archaeology before this trip, and it has made me aware of careers in heritage law that meld my interests in the legal and historical fields in a way that I hadn’t previously thought possible. I was going into law school a little unsure of what specific type of practice I would like to work in, and now I have a much better idea of what I can pursue. Another way in which this experience has helped me is socially. Until a couple of years ago, I was quite an introvert, preferring alone time to meeting new people and going out. While I’ve become much more sociable in recent years, this trip has been a good proof of concept that this wasn’t a fluke or only present in familiar places, but rather that I have become more outgoing as I’ve made good friends amongst all the teams that we have worked with on the site. I think the most important skills that I’ve developed in my time here are those interpersonal ones along with a deeper respect for the importance of the ethical pursuit of archaeology and the burden of care that comes with it that often becomes compromised for a variety of reasons, often political ones. While I don’t plan to pursue a career in this exact field of hands-on archaeology, these interpersonal and ethical skills are very useful in any field I could pursue, but especially in heritage law where actual archaeological experience would give me a much deeper understanding and respect for the field.
These experiences and skills in Türkiye have very much broadened my view of the eastern Mediterranean and renewed my love for the history and culture of the region. In the last semester of college I grew a bit tired of reading and thinking academically, and being away from the US in a very different cultural context has reignited my curiosity for the world in a way that I wasn’t expecting it to. From trying to make my way through Gazipașa to making friends in the conservation team, my experience has confirmed my desire to learn more about the world and the people that inhabit it. I love to meet new people, especially people with very different experiences and backgrounds than me because that ability to learn and understand new places and people is what makes life worth living to me. I cannot pinpoint a specific technical or leadership skill that has stuck out to me in my time here other than that curiosity and zeal for learning that I had worried was fading away.