An apocryphal Mr. Murphy once said "If something can go wrong it will". In some respects, fieldwork, and field-schools, are the quintessential examples of Murphy's law--something nearly always goes wrong. Two feet of snow and some obscure administrator deciding that the semester's over so no one is using Blackboard and therefore taking it "off line" qualify as something going wrong. One of the intriguing things about field research with humans, relative to other kinds of research, is the simple fact that there is much one cannot control; life (and the environment) moves on around us largely independent of our noble goals and desires.

While this is a frustrating bump in our road, no one is holding me at gunpoint (Guatemala), or telling me I can't come back to the community to finish my work (Mexico, for failing to pay a bribe). There will be other bumps--several of us will get sick, all of our careful planning will not match the reality of the field site, and given an airline system in chaos, there's a fair to even chance someone will miss a flight. Field work is, in many respects, all about flexibility--in a steadily changing environment how does one still get the work done in and around the bumps, deviations, and occasional stoppages with which we're confronted.

JB