From the pillars of civilization to the pillars of law As the sweat ran down my nose and mingled with the dirt, I shouted: "I found glass! The glass is considered a rare find and after hearing my announcement, the excavation team stopped digging. Later, as I sat under the overhang of the laboratory roof, patiently removing dirt from a pottery shard and reconstructing a pot from that shard, I realized that archeology parallels the process production of a paper, piece by piece and card by card. . I came to Mallorca, Spain, because of my passion for Egyptology and archaeology. I was determined to do some digging and, although Majorca is not Egypt, this was my chance to do so. I enjoy solving puzzles: discovering pieces, analyzing their significance, discovering relationships, and then using the information to produce a final work. An archaeologist discovers an object; draws on knowledge of culture, available materials, and history to analyze the object; deciphers its role and determines its value. Writing, research, legal studies, and the practice of law share this process with archaeology. Instead of finding a pottery shard in the ground, the discovery is information and requires research and analysis. The challenge of researching and analyzing an unknown topic is the most enjoyable part of academic life. A specialist thesis that I wrote on Colombian environmental policy allowed me to study a subject that I was previously unaware of. I chose Colombian environmental politics because my Latin American politics class did not cover Colombia and I was interested, after writing about French and American environmental politics, in continuing my study of the environmental policies of different countries. Colombia, however, presented a greater challenge than the other two countries due to the lack of available materials. The Colombian consulate was unable to help me, so I found one of the few experts in the field who directed me to relevant documents. I took on a provocative, previously unknown topic and turned it into something I knew. The process is like discovering a shard, or if you're lucky, a piece of glass. The Colombian article also stands out as one of my favorite projects because of the analysis and interpretation it requires. The class analyzed the events using a matrix composed of political, social, international and national factors. The environmental articles offered no obvious examples of the reasons for the events; my analysis was based solely on my interpretation.