When we arrived on site at Vigla the very first day, I was feeling ready and excited to get to excavating, but truthfully I was more nervous than anything. Despite my love for studying archaeology, I was unsure about my ability to show up and actually do the work as well as I wanted to be able to. My time in Europe thus far had been trying, and the thought of failing at the thing I had been dreaming of was overwhelming. Waking up at the crack of dawn, and throughout the drive to site, I was frankly terrified.

Upon arrival, we got to work taking care of the cover-ups from last year’s excavation and the growth that had taken over the site in the year it had been exposed. I worked through the nerves and spent the first hour or so as a link in the chain moving the piles of rocks that covered

I began feeling confident, or at least the very least like I was capable of doing what I came here to do, which was a good feeling. Almost immediately after that feeling started to settle in, I felt a sharp pang of pain on my ankle, almost like an intense bee sting, and thought I must have just swept a thorn or prick into the tongue of my shoe, only to look down and see a sand-colored scorpion scuttle out of my shoe, across the top of my foot, and into the dirt in front of me. My heart sank and the feeling of failure slapped me in the face. I wanted to keep digging, to pretend this hadn’t happened and prove to myself that I CAN do this. Despite that, the folks digging near me alerted our supervisors who quickly lifted me out of the trench telling me I had to go get checked out. I cried walking to the van, not because of the pain, (it truly wasn’t bad) but because I felt so disappointed in myself. The scorpion felt like a sign the world was sending me that I’m not cut out for this.

Bill, Dr. Stephens, and I started to the hospital but decided to stop at the first pharmacy we saw to see if I could get care quicker, Bill said that the pharmacists in Cyprus have more medical education than they do in the states. They asked to see a photo of the scorpion and asked how I felt, quickly checked my foot out and then gave me an antihistamine and a medicated gel. By that point, my foot was burning and I could feel the sting throbbing, but all I wanted was to act like it wasn’t happening and go back to site. Dr. Stephens was having absolutely none of that and told me to take the day so it could heal. The day turned slow, I soaked my foot alone and waited for the rest of the group to return. My mind, however, raced. I quieted it with a call to my parents and a lot of YouTube, but the fear crept up on me still. I felt all but certain that the next day on site would kill me. The fact that the next two days were spent pottery washing Spoiler alert: it didn’t. Neither did the next day or any day after that.

At the end of the trip now as I reflect back on this experience, all these fear feel silly, and I feel like a different person than the one who felt like she couldn’t do it, because I DID do it. No scorpion, no heat, no 4am wake up stopped me from persevering through this month. Every time I got scared or overheated or exhausted, I reminded myself that I got knocked down and got back up again.  

Annika Schramm