After I graduate from Indiana University Indianapolis, I aim to attend a graduate program in a foreign country or elsewhere in the United States. I currently don't know what program I will be pursuing, but it will help me reach my career goal of being a forensic anthropologist. When I was a little kid, I watched a lot of crime-solving TV shows like NCIS or Dateline with my family, but my absolute favorite of the shows we would watch was called "Bones". It was a drama show about a team of forensic scientists who would work to figure out the identities of bodies that were extremely decomposed or otherwise damaged. The main character was a female forensic anthropologist, and as an impressionable child with a mother who always said, "You can do anything if you work hard enough", that image has lingered in my subconscious ever since. I'm a first-generation college student and I've always been told that as long as I try hard and work harder, I could achieve pretty much anything. So I figured that if I was going to get a career in anything, I might as well go into a subject that I find extremely interesting and that can potentially help communities around the world.
Through my time working in Dr. Deane's lab and the classes that I've taken over the 2024-25 school year, I've discovered that I really enjoy anthropology as a field. While I currently have no plans to pivot my career plans entirely to paleoanthropology and primate studies, I want to do more work relating to skeletal remains including those that are ancient. This internship has given me the amazing opportunity to enter the world of anthropological lab work and has even helped me open doors for similar work in the future. At the beginning of this internship, I hoped to figure out if I wanted to work in a lab in the future or if I might be better suited for a different kind of research. I'm very glad to say that I would not mind working in an environment similar to Dr. Deane's lab. This whole experience has also helped me gain more confidence about my field of study and where I would like to go with it in the future.
When I first applied to LHSI my goals for my life for the future were admittably nebulous. I had rough ideas of what i wanted to do -- maybe go to graduate school or study abroad, probably attend a field school -- but I had no concrete plans at the time. Now, as I enter the end of my year as a sophomore, I have been able to develop these goals into something a bit more realistic.
At this time, I still hope to study abroad one day, but as an undergrad it seems to be an unlikely goal due to my current financial situation and overcrowded schedule. However, this realization has allowed be to start growing a new goal: attending a graduate school overseas. By talking with my professors, my LHSI internship supervisor, and my advisors, I've determined that it would be highly beneficial for me to pursue further schooling after I complete my undergraduate program. I've always wanted to travel and see new places, so attending a graduate school overseas would be ideal. I still have no solid idea as to what the topic of my graduate degree would be, but I've found myself drawn more and more to the world of bio-anthropology. Come the Spring of 2026, I hope to have begun my applications to multiple different graduate programs.
In order to be considered a qualified anthropologist or archaeologist in most nations, all students are expected to attend what is known as a field school at some point (ideally before graduation). Field schools allow students to gain experience primarily in the practical skills required in the job field, such as how to properly dig a square hole and how to properly recover and analyze artifacts. With that being said, they also teach students important "soft skills" that are crucial when it comes to working with others and local communities. In May 2025, I will be attending one of these schools myself. The program its self will last a little over a month, but I am extremely looking forward to the skills I will gain, the experiences I will have, and the people that I will meet.
Learning Goal #1: Learn how to adeptly use technologies or programs that I haven't used before.
Relevance: Learning how to use new programs or machines is very useful in a professional setting as it shows mental and professional flexibility.
Action Plan:
Practice with a variety of materials and techniques before starting to gather lab data.
Create and manipulate three-dimensional models.
Create and organize a database of scanned specimens.
Progress: Throughout my internship, I've had the opportunity to work with multiple machines and programs that I had never used before, such as the Artec 3D scanner and a software program that allows the user to manipulate and measure three-dimensional models. During my time, I have primarily focused on bettering my skills with these machines and created multiple files and databases with them.
Learning Goal #2: Learn how to create professional documents and data reports.
Relevance: When working in any professional environment, it is important to know how to create accurate and understandable documents or reports. It will also be useful information for future lab experiences (both academic and professional).
Action Plan:
Creating a database of scanned specimens.
Contribute to reports using information gathered in the lab.
Analyzing data found from research and cross-examination.
Progress: While I didn't have any part in writing scientific reports that would later be submitted as abstracts, I did collect the data that would later be used. For research, a lot of the data reports that are made (likely by interns such as myself) are unable to be put to proper use until later on in the research process. Despite this, I learned a lot about how to make coherent data reports and what the process for submitting research documents is.
Learning Goal #3: Learn how to interact with others in a professional environment.
Relevance: This is a crucial skill to have in any profession. Currently, I have no prior knowledge of how to act and interact with others within a professional research environment.
Action Plan:
Conversing with the laboratory supervisor on tasks.
Working with professionals outside of the laboratory.
Writing and contributing to research documents.
Progress: Since I was the only intern at this site, I had a difficult time working on this goal. While I would interact with my supervisor on a near-weekly basis and whenever I needed clarification outside of those short meetings, I would like to think that we've built up a fairly adequate relationship. I do wish that I had been able to interact with more people, but due to the nature of the lab, I just never got that chance.
In March you'll complete your spring self-assessment again (link in Canvas).
After you submit the self-assessment add the following to your ePortfolio:
March: Which skills on the survey are you using or where are you more confident since fall? Give examples of how you're using the skills or how you know you're growing.
March: Which skills from the survey would you like to continue to work on? What will you do to grow the skills this semester or after LHSI?
In March, edit your October reflection to add more ways the internship helped you gain a deeper understanding of your coursework and major in the spring semester.
Currently, the skills I've been able to develop the most relate to independent work in an environment without frequent supervision. As I am frequently the only person present in the lab lately, learning how to work efficiently without a supervisor or colleagues present has been a skill that I have grown to be quite confident with. Once my supervisor, Dr. Deane, gives me an objective and a deadline, I can easily go about my work with minimal assistance. With that being said, I pushed myself to seek out guidance from my supervisor in times of confusion which was outside of my comfort zone (especially at the beginning of the internship).
I want to get better at professional correspondence on multiple different fronts, despite the . I slowly started to become more comfortable reaching out to my supervisor for assistance as the need arose, but I am aware that my communication skills still need a lot of work. Most of the time, we communicated through text messages as in-person meetings aren't always the most efficent way to discuss projects or instructions when either party was occupied elsewhere. Throughout the year, we both strove to meet more often in person, but between my supervisor managing multiple different things at once -- teaching medical students, other research, attending academic assemblies, etc -- and my own class schedule, it was somewhat difficult to find the time to talk face to face. Despite this, I believe that both my communication skills and my time managemnet skills were able to develop more in the face of these difficulties.
As the end to the spring semester begins to approach, I would like to really work on creating a good, meaningful relationtionship with my supervisor. By doing this, I hope to improve my communication skills more since it's something that I'm still not extremely comfortable or confidnent with. Additionally, I would like to start seeking out constructive critisism from my supervisor more. Currently, I have essentially been given free reign of my projects with very little supervision until the deadline of a project is reached. I feel that this leads to very little opportunites for any constructive critisism to be given out.
I feel that through my internship experience so far, I’ve gained a better understanding of my major overall. While my work at my internship doesn’t correlate all too much with my coursework since most topics covered in undergraduate courses focus on humans/hominids, I feel that I’ve gained more general knowledge that will be very helpful in the future. This is especially true for the Human Osteology course that I took during the spring semester. Throughout my time in this class, I was able to draw connections between the humanoid structures I was learning about and the primate skeletons that I was observing during my time in Dr. Deane's lab.
Through my internship experiences, conversations with my supervisor, and my fall semester coursework, I believe I have a better understanding of where I could go with my degree. Forensic science is just one division of a sub-field of anthropology called biological anthropology. I’ve learned lately that there are so many interesting areas of study within this area of study! This internship and the anthropology classes I’ve taken for my degree have made me realize that I enjoy bio-anthropology, and I am currently considering pursuing the topic in graduate school.