"I'm curious about what a lab looks like for an interdisciplinary historian," Kayla says. "Is it a secret time machine?"
Your entire body grows hot as adrenaline floods it. Now you have to come up with a plausible-sounding reason a historian would have a lab. Talking to non-practitioners about your work is so precarious. "It's in collaboration with the crafts design department. We create many of the patterns we study to better understand how their medium impacts their design."
"Very hands-on," Kayla says. "I like that. I always enjoyed tinkering and crafting. So of course I went into very abstract mathematics."
You let out a breath. She bought it. "As you can imagine, coordinating with the crafts design department and deciding what equipment I personally need and ordering it and installing it is a lot."
Kayla nods. "I can imagine. My recommendation would be to treat it as its own project. I know it feels as if you need to rush through setup, but take a day or two to think through your setup. Determine milestones you want to reach on given dates, draw up a schedule, and sequence your tasks so that you move through the setup efficiently."
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