Long time no see!

Hi everyone! It has been a few years since I last posted a personal blog, but I wanted to come on here and give a few updates.

First off, I am now a fourth-year Ph.D. student at Michigan State University. I will defend my dissertation proposal this semester, which is the last obstacle to navigate before I officially become a Ph.D. candidate (yay!). My dissertation research, which you can read more about here, will focus on ancient health and diet in the ancient Maya, specifically in Belize. To do this, I will be decalcifying dental calculus (the stuff your dental hygienist scrapes off of your teeth!) to look at the microbotanicals and proteins trapped in the matrix. As dental calculus calcifies during life, the remains found in the dental calculus will be the things that the person would have interacted with in life (think food and medicine!). 

Getting to this point was a journey though. I moved to Michigan right after I graduated from undergrad in 2020. I moved here during a pandemic, not knowing anyone who lived in Michigan. So, as you may imagine, it was a little bit of a tough transition for me as I was not able to meet people in person for awhile. With that said, I was still able to develop a support system relatively quick. This support system has meant the world to me. They have been there for me through the highs and the lows of grad school, and I feel incredibly lucky to have them.

Throughout the last few years, I have had several different opportunities that have allowed me to broaden my skillset. This has included experiences in bioarchaeology, historic archaeology, anatomy, digital humanities, public outreach, community engagement, and so much more. The last four years have been jammed pack of activities and research, which cannot be encompassed fully in a single blogpost. Of course, if you're interested, you can read about what I've gotten into in my interactive CV, or you can always email me.

I've been debating on deleting this blog, or picking it back up. After some consideration and digital humanities education, I have decided to start it back up. I don't plan to post a blog regularly, but hope to use this as a narrative around my experience during my dissertation research and writing. So, if you're interested in learning about what going through the dissertation process is like real-time, then you can come back here periodically to see me desend into chaos (just kidding... hopefully).