An opportunity when least expected...

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For the past year I've been taking anthropology courses for my major at my local community college. As it is not a large college I ended up taking the classes with the same two professors so they were familiar with most of us taking the anthro classes.

I did not know this at the time but the college was setting itself up to become a 4 year college and was starting up its anthropology department. My two teachers were to be the head honchos of it.

At the end of the summer semester, on the last day of class the prof's asked me and 3 others to stay after class. Turns out we were the only ones that had straight A's in all the anthro classes and we had started taking the classes as they had been introduced into the college. Our essays and thesis had also been well received.

Turns out the college was launching the anthro dept. starting this fall semester..and they were starting it out with a bang. The head of the anthro dept. had received an invitation from a university in Australia (I cannot give the name out sry) to do a joint research project on the Neanderthal's brain.. half of the project was genetic in nature the other half anthropological. Our college would handle the anthropological aspect of it.

We were asked to be the anthro. research assistants. This will apparently be an important research paper that when published, will have our names on it & it may also include the potential to travel to the Max Planck institute in Germany as well as to Australia in the coming years.

I had been discussing Neanderthals with my prof. a month before this came up and she wanted me to write down a theory I had mentioned to her back then so she could present it to the head of the research program for consideration as it could be relevant to the study. I did.

Last week she contacted me telling me that out of her 1hr30min scheduled conference with the head of the project they had spent 45 mins discussing what I had written. They really think I may be on to something and are assigning resources to follow that lead.

If I'm right. I'm told, my name may be listed in the paper in better light than just an assistant researcher & I may have the chance to be offered a graduate scholarship in their univ. If not then its still an insight they consider important and the head researcher is likely to give me letters of recommendation when applying for graduate studies.

In the meantime i've been assigned to assist both the anthro and the genetics team in the research element.

I was psyched to do some research even if it was unpaid.. it was good experience and it would look good to show research at an undergrad level. But this now.. wow.

It's almost spring here in Australia here, lovely weather...

Wow, that is excellent!

I may take that offer late next year

Congrats that's awesome.... hope it all works out well.

Wow, that's fantastic.... Being asked to do research is pretty great, but actually contributing a topic of research is really impressive!

Good luck!

Sweet! Have a great time down under

Now if I could just get some more traction with my Aspie Brain Access theory...

If you know anyone who might be interested in it... It's right here My Theory

I'll aknowledge you in the research paper

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*Tries to think of something cool* Um, Uhm, Uhmmm *Head Explodes* Never Mind

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