Induction in the Pandemic Year by Chaitanya Rawat & Alina Naqvi

It started with Instagram posts and WhatsApp stories. This organisation, they said, will make you write research papers every 15 days (for a year!), and was dedicated to Archaeology. Apart from that, one knew little.    

Perhaps it was the boredom then, or perhaps the genuine will to be productive in lazy times. At least, that was the mindset just before joining Speaking Archaeologically. Whatever the case, the virtual induction really got us working.

Since physical contact was not possible, WhatsApp became the primary source of getting information on the organisation, our fellow members, or the supervisor, Shriya Ma’am.

The induction itself began with a series of requirements - (we only had a bare idea of the organisation before the induction itself) - Join a Facebook group (in some cases, Join Facebook!), join Pinterest, join Trello, and join their Research Wing Induction group.
With compliance to those directions sorted, then began the dive into Object Analysis, and the first task, on Mathura and Gandhara Sculptures. 

To be honest, giving a paper with a scope like that with one’s basic knowledge of writing was always going to be challenging. That’s where the Audios came in. Long, daily (sometimes from 10-10), descriptive audios, all done by Shriya Ma’am, with handouts, images and videos to help make the task somewhat understandable. 

Still, with a better-than-zero, but the somewhat convincing idea that this paper might take shape after all, went in the first tasks. No workshops and little personal interaction - it is somewhat difficult to do so with people you’ve never met till 3 days ago - was going to make for a strange time at the start, but then again, the papers were all individually made. Still, the first task had many of its quirks like, spending an hour to find an accession number only for it to turn out to be ‘A-1’ or when your laptop which has been ever so patient with your research suddenly decides to stop working 10 minutes before the deadline. The struggle is real. 

Evaluations were public and detailed. Unexpected, but to get a detailed critique was welcome - for this finally made clear some of the nitty-gritties of paper writing. 

That was the first task, and 2 months have elapsed since then. Meetings have been replaced by Google and Zoom. Lectures and Workshops, replaced by Audio notes and Youtube videos. We are a bit more wiser, a bit more cautious to write, far less cautious to approach and a bit more clear about how to go about things. This fortnightly submission routine continues and writing a research paper is not as daunting as it once appeared to be. With all the rigorous training that has gone into making us write credible research papers since the induction, writing this blog was perhaps the most difficult task till date, for it contains uncited data and lots of loaded statements.