This semester has been amazing, I have learned so much ,not just from professor Rowe ,but about my community around me. I hadn’t really ever paid attention to the history around me before, I always seem to focus on the history everywhere else but here. But now I realize that I don’t have to travel far for me to find a rich and culture filled history. Collecting data at the Hidalgo public cemetery has been a great experience. I go to do hands on work with actual tools that archaeologist use on field excavations, I made new friends and got close to old ones. My professor has opened new doors for my future ,which is something I’m very excited about. I’ve also kind learned to understand life and death . The deceased buried at the cemetery all had stories ,some of them could’ve been happy or sad, but at some point of their life they must’ve had someone that loved them,because if they didn’t then they wouldn’t have had some many grave offerings. My eyes this past semester have somehow been trained to look at things differently even more than they already were before. I can now see different details in the ground , I can now tell what a grave slump looks like and am able to tell what it means , I can see the walking trails in grass that have occurred over time from students taking shortcuts. The Utrgv symposium is something I thought that I would’ve never be apart of, I never thought we would ever win a team award for it either, but we did, which was an amazing moment. That moment meant that our work was also important not only to ourselves but to other people in the public and that this project intrigues people and makes them think about the history of the community they’ve lived in all their life. This project is also a great experience for myself and my fellow students, those of us who are studying anthropology, know how expensive field schools can be , so I know that we all really appreciate the hands on work we get to do with the equipment, such as the total mapping station, which is what we used to map the cemetery that way in the future we can upload the map online and it can allow people searching for their loved ones ,see images of the headstones and know there location. Overall this semester has been an amazing experience and it has opened more doors for my future and I am very excited to see where those doors will take me.
It is great to see an others stance on the course! I agree, through school most of our life we are taught the history of other states, nations, and cities. Yet, there has never been a focus on our own history here at home. It is so intriguing to see what history lays right beneath our feet, and to be able to access it is even better! I learned so much from this course, and I learned so much from others within the class. I am glad to have had you as a friend and colleague within this project. To be able to work on the Engaged Scholars Symposium was also an amazing experience that would not have been able to happen without everyone who participated!