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I hit 1,000 hours in my museum's fossil prep lab and I'm not sure if that makes me an expert or just stubborn
I logged my 1,000th hour in the prep lab at the natural history museum here in Denver on Tuesday, and honestly the number caught me off guard. Half of me thinks that's real experience, since I've prepped maybe 40 specimens now, including a triceratops brow horn that took me 6 months. The other half thinks hours don't mean much if most of them were spent hunched over a microscope picking matrix off a vertebrae with a pin vise. Does time in the lab actually equal skill, or is it more about the quality of the specimens someone trusts you with? Curious what other prep folks think.
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wesley18118d ago
Congrats on hitting 1,000 hours, that is a big deal whether it feels like it or not. I have about 600 in my lab and I know the feeling of staring at that pin vise wondering if I am actually getting better or just getting slower at the same mistakes. That triceratops brow horn taking 6 months tells me way more than the hour count does, since those things are nerve wracking and most people would have rushed it. Time in the lab matters but I figure the trust to work on something that fragile is the real proof you know what you are doing.
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