Clara Bosak-Schroeder, URAP Apprentice with Professor Todd Hickey, Classics

Please tell us about the project you are currently working on.

The collection of the Tebtuni papyri (The Center for the Tebtunis Papyri) is very large. I was given one box, which represents just one part of the whole archive. This is a box that Oxford University had kept for the past century, and it recently was returned to the Bancroft Library. I am going through the pieces one by one, and I am transferring them from the paper they were preserved in, which were usually pieces of the Oxford University Gazette, into acid-free paper. As I am doing that I am giving each of the pieces numbers, and I am also eventually going to be entering them into the database.

So you are basically re-archiving the papyri.

Exactly. The pieces had numbers from the Oxford system, but we are basically giving them new numbers so they fit into our databases.

Can you describe a typical day in your life as an apprentice?

Because this is pretty tedious work, I try to break it up a little. I need to cut the acid-free paper into the right shape for preserving it, and I also need to make sure that we have photographs of all the pieces. So sometimes I stop preserving the papyri and archiving them and I do those other little tasks, but it is pretty much just one job.

I can imagine that over time you might have some moments when it gets a little tedious, but I hope that there are still aspects you appreciate about this experience - what is it that you appreciate the most?
I appreciate the most how useful and necessary it is. We have so many pieces that have not been preserved or catalogued properly, and the really important work is going to study them, but that can’t happen until this step happens first, and I don’t have the expertise to do the scholarship, but I am still glad that they allow me to be a part of this preparatory work.

So having the bigger picture in mind helps you to see the relevance of your work.

Yes. It is also a lot of fun to touch these things and to see the different scripts and handwritings. I am very interested in the way that scripts changed over time, and it is wonderful to see real specimens of handwriting. All of these documents come from the same time period, but even just seeing the different handwriting from different people is very interesting to me.

Is there anything that surprised you about doing research?

I am surprised at the way work actually gets done. I am putting all this work into getting these papyri into acid free paper, but that is actually not how they will be preserved in the end. We will have to do it all again to get them under glass. I guess I expected that everything would be done as efficiently as possible, but in fact, even in academia things are being done, and then they are being done again, only a little better and then they are done again, a little better…

If you think back to when you were a prospective apprentice, is there anything that would have been useful for you to know? Is there any advice you have for prospective apprentices?

I don’t think so. I had a vague sense of what the work was going to be like and that was enough. It would have been nice to go to a website and see the person who did this last year and go and talk to him or her to find out how it was like. I happen to have a friend who did this a couple of semesters ago, and she really enjoyed it and that was enough for me. But if I hadn’t had that contact, I wouldn’t have known at all what it was going to be like.

Is there anything you would like to add about your experience?

Well, I understand this interview to be an advertisement for this program, so…

No, no, please feel free to say anything you want.

It is a wonderful experience, especially if you are interested in grad school or if you are interested in pursuing research at the undergraduate level, it gets you the necessary hands-on experience. Research is not what most people expect it is, and I was expecting it to be the way it is, which is sort of slow and repetitive, but for students who are interested in doing this as a career, it is a really important to get this sort of experience.
I think this is also an important aspect of the URAP program, the fact that students find out about the reality of research in that it is not always glamorous, that it can be tedious and repetitive.

Yes. I would say, however, that having seen this, I am still very excited about doing this kind of work, and I hope that I can do it next semester. Even though it is repetitive and a little tedious, it is still exciting to be a part of this project, and I feel very positive overall.

What is your experience working in the team?

Everyone pretty much works by him- or herself. Todd (Professor Todd Hickey, the faculty mentor) will come over and will make sure that things are going ok, of if I have questions, I can go do him, but I was pretty much left on my own.

Did you receive the mentorship necessary to keep going? Is your mentor approachable when you have questions?

Yes. I had Professor Hickey as a teacher in a previous class, so I felt very comfortable asking questions. I guess I actually imagined that we would be working more side by side, but I wasn’t disappointed that that wasn’t the case.

Thank you very much!