ABSTRACT
Like most of the decisions discussed in this volume, there is no universally applicable rule governing the difficult choice of when to pack up and head home. Some fieldworkers have their choices made for them. For one person, kidney failure forced medical evacuation. One contributor, caught unexpectedly in a war zone, recounted, “When I woke to the sound of MIG fighter jets overhead, incoming artillery shells and machine gun fire outside the door I knew it was time to leave!” Only slightly less dramatic, when you run out of money and are directed by authorities to leave the country (or else!), or when your partner (or for graduate students, adviser) says come home now, it is almost surely time to pack up. For undergraduates, research is often delineated by the semester program that one studies with, or by the summer between academic semesters.
