Old professor told me 'dig slow, read fast' - wish I listened sooner

During a field school in New Mexico 2 years ago, Dr. Harris kept telling me that every time I rushed through a trench. I thought he was just being slow. Last month I was going over my old field notes for a paper and realized I missed a whole layer of charcoal because I skimmed the soil too fast. Lost a chance at a carbon date. Anyone else have a mentor's advice that only made sense years later?

3 comments

3 Comments

paulw531mo ago

Wait did you really skim a whole layer of charcoal or were you just digging too fast to notice it? Missing a charcoal lens is rough but sometimes you gotta check your screen size too, not just how fast you dig.

gibson.morgan1mo ago

You know what, this actually makes a lot of sense and I used to be totally against that idea. I always thought going fast was the only way to get through a site, like speed was the main thing that mattered for production. But after a few times of missing stuff and having to go back, I started paying more attention to my screen size and how it matches up with what I'm digging through. It changes everything when you slow down just a bit and really look at what's in your screen, not just assume you're catching it all. Now I'm way more careful and honestly I get less frustrated because I'm not redoing work all the time.

brianm661mo ago

Oof yeah that's a rough one. I've been there where you're just going hard and fast and suddenly you realize you missed a whole layer. It's like dang now I gotta redo all that work or at least spend extra time checking my screens. The worst part is you think you're making good progress and then bam, you gotta backtrack. Hope it didn't mess up your whole day too bad.