Stay Tuned. Here's Why.

This week, our assignment was to conduct an oral interview with someone who knew something about the civilization to which we were assigned and the aspect of it to which our group was assigned. For me, this meant conducting an oral interview with someone who is an expert on education within the Etruscan Civilization. How do you do such a thing? That is a very good question. Let me tell you.

First, you go find out how many professors of Etruscology (yes, that is a word) are conveniently located right here at BYU. Answer: Not very many. Then, you go online and try and find out where those professors are located. Answer: Various places around the globe, including the University of Massachusetts Amherst. Then you start sending emails to anyone you can possibly find or think of who might know something about Etruscans, including professors in other places, BYU professors who study something remotely related to Etruscology, and even people who study nothing remotely related to Etruscology. Then you spend the next week and a half not hearing anything/getting emails that politely decline the opportunity to speak with  you/getting emails that say the recipient really isn’t particularly qualified to speak about Etruscan education/thinking you will probably end up having to do something like email someone you know who once served a mission in Italy and call it good. You even get an email from a professor saying that if this is for an assignment, it really should be scheduled further in advance, because a week and a half is insufficient time to make time for such an interview. I appreciate that, but it doesn’t actually change my assignment.

So, you resign yourself to an undesirable fate, but then, the morning your post is due, you get an email from someone you know, saying that they know someone who is currently pursuing graduate studies in something kind of related to Etruscology! And you are elated. But it also means that you can’t conduct your interview until Wednesday afternoon, and will not be able to post on your blog until after that. So you get on your blog and spend three paragraphs telling your fellow bloggers that because you have about a thousand different requirements to meet in this one blog post and you can’t quite meet all of them without sacrificing quality, okay?

So yeah. Stay tuned. This afternoon.