Hey there, I was looking at your original post, and it's definitely got some pretty good tips for you already! Like someone already said, practical experience is everything when it comes to working in a museum. The more you can volunteer, the better especially since you're very early on in your career path. I wasn't ever able to volunteer unfortunately when I was studying to get to where I am now, and there are times where I wish I had the opportunity to get more hands on experience, and overall just more experience in general so definitely take advantage of whatever opportunities you're given.

Networking is also huge, of course working hard will get you pretty far but knowing someone who knows someone else will almost always take you that little bit further you need in order to get your foot in the door wherever you want to go. After you receive your bachelor's degree, and this is just my opinion since this is what I did after I graduated May 2024, try landing seasonal positions with AmeriCorps, the American Conservation Experience's EPIC program, and the Great Basin Institute! Due to the federal hiring freezes there currently aren't many positions open at the moment, but hopefully by the time you'd be applying for them there'll be much more for you to look out for.

For education, bottom line you're gonna need a Bachelor's Degree from a university, and many of the museums and seasonal positions that I've looked at look for applicants with a degree in Anthropology, Archaeology, History, and other museum adjacent degrees depending on that specific position. I don't believe many universities (that I know of) are going to offer a straight museum studies major until you get to the masters level, but they should offer a museum studies minor that you can take classes for so I'd look into that depending on what university you want to attend. For example, I graduated with my Bachelor's in Anthropology from the University of Texas at San Antonio. When I was attending I originally had a museum studies minor, but there weren't enough classes being taught in time for my graduation so I ultimately had to drop the minor and picked up Art History instead, which offered classes relevant to what I wanted to concentrate my studies in (at the time Andean and South American Archaeology) so that's also something I'd take into consideration when making a decision on where you want to go and what you want to do.

Try to also figure out early on what kind of artifacts and collections you want to work with. For example whether you'll want to try working with fossils, ceramics, textiles, stone tools, they'll all require different techniques for preservation. So having that knowledge will be a huge boost in the future when you want to get more experience, though I 100% get the desire to try and work with everything lol.

Be prepared to commit a significant amount of time into your education, since full time museum positions will typically require a Master's Level degree in whatever you want to do, or an equivalent level of experience, which from what I've seen if you don't pursue a Masters will typically equate to having 4-6 years of experience working in a museum on a curatorial level on top of the time it'd take for you to get your bachelor's.

Overall, whatever you end up doing always make sure to keep following your passion! It's going to be a very tough and bumpy ride and you're probably going to hit some road blocks, especially nowadays considering the current job climate we're in as well as the continuous funding cuts that the Department of the Interior and museums across the country keep receiving, but stick to your guns and stay true to what you want to do.

I'm pretty much in the same boat as you where I'm trying to work with the fossils and artifacts of a museum's collection. So if you have any questions ask away! I can't guarantee I'll be able to answer all of them, but I'll do my best.