Sarah Foster

Grad School and the Beast

I was originally accepted into University of New Mexico’s Master of Public Archaeology program starting fall of 2018. I was extremely proud of myself because I felt that all my hard work in undergraduate university had paid off. At the same time, however, I was very confused and anxious about what I wanted to do or how I wanted to tackle the immense task of attending graduate school. When my professors and peers from undergrad would congratulate me for my admittance to grad school, instead of excited I felt… disassociated… like it wasn’t real. And not in a “too good to be true” kind of feeling, but in a nonplussed kind of feeling. I would even say things like “yeah, that ought to knock me down a few pegs”. I said this because during my undergraduate career I had been in honors societies, been the president of the anthropology clubs, assisted professors with their classes, mentored younger (and even sometimes older) freshmen, been an active member in local archaeology societies and clubs, served as a crew chief for my field schools and as a lead lab tech for my work study gig in the archaeology lab, and had even started working in cultural resource management before I graduated with a bachelors. All as a non-traditional student in my late 20s and early 30s, while working and taking care of a grandmother with dementia. But now, things were getting real. Especially the imposter’s syndrome.