Wrote my biography for the university’s graduate profiles website today. Had a further realization around how far I have come since I started graduate school 22 years ago, and how not only my research interests but my general goals shifted over all that time. Sure, part of it has to do with a change of academic study area, and some has to do with the reality of going from being 28 years old to being 50 and how much a person changes in that amount of time. But underneath these changes I also get a glimpse at the unexpected paths we take, especially when the roads we thought we were going to walk are unavailable, or terrain requires detours. Would 28 year old me be surprised I’m writing on sectarian violence, for example? Back then I was just interested in hieroglyphs and museums.
Tamara L. Siuda, unplugged