A New Year

Can you say "Holy procrastination Batman!" It has been forever since I have been on this blog. In some ways that's bad (I've missed posting a lot of stuff that has hit the news regarding Anthropology) and in some ways that's good. For instance, its good because it has given me a lot of time to reflect on where I am going and what I want to be doing. In my last post from October I was extremely deflated. I had been looking at job postings and all I saw was Masters, Masters, Masters. Do I have a masters degree? No. Needless to say that sent my confidence level into the basement and I resigned myself to working as a non-anthropologist. It took a LONGGGGGG time for me to jump back up on the "I am an Anthropologist no matter what you say!" bandwagon. I began researching again and have started to see that its not all masters degree jobs. Sure, I bet they would hire you on the spot if you have one, but there are lots of positions that will take a bachelors with field experience.

At first I was like "field experience! How on earth am I going to get that!!!" (More negative self talk...) then I remembered when I had contacted Fort Vancouver about volunteering there. It had been months since I was last in contact but I thought it was worth a try. Upon further research, I found that a lot of employers will take volunteer experience into account which is AWESOME!!! (Que happy dance!) Volunteering is no problemo! This lead to more research (yes...I do research for fun! Welcome to my world). I located several locations across the US where I could apply to work on projects to gain experience. I have since applied for two that are currently accepting applications in the Midwest and I am keeping an eye out for ones here on the west coast. I also got in touch with Fort Vancouver and I now have an appointment set up to go in and talk to them tomorrow. I cant even begin to tell you how excited I am!!! I love Anthropology. Could be a little weird. I don't know. What I do know though, is that when I was in college there was a long time where I had no clue what I wanted to do. I had no passion. Sure there were a lot of things I liked to do or thought were interesting (hence the fact I changed my major a million times before landing on Anthropology). But that first class I took on Biological Anthropology was what sealed the deal. Up until that point I had never been so totally ingrained in a topic before. The A that I pulled in that class was easy. Not because the course work was easy (trust me...it wasnt!) It was because I couldn't put the book down. I couldn't keep from looking up different sites on the internet about it or going to the library and checking out extra stuff. Looking back, I am probably lucky I pulled honor roll that semester because lord only knows my other classes were suffering from some serious neglect.

The crazy thing about all the negative self talk though, is that I am actually a really confident person. Especially when its something I am passionate about. I think the thing that got me is that I have read all the amazing things others have done, from going to the ends of the earth to work with remote groups that have never been exposed to the outside world, all the way to digging up the worlds most amazing treasures. Then here I am, little old me. I've never even been outside of the United States. The only foreigners I've met were exchange students. Even though I was passionate about the topic, I didn't know if there would come a point where I would feel like an expert in my field. But then I realized, when is anyone ever really an expert. They may be one in the moment but there are so many new things out there to learn and explore that our knowledge is changing every day. Experts come and go. The thing in life is to find something that you are so incredibly passionate about that you can put your whole self into it. In the end I have found that I was really intimidated by all the amazing places my professors had been to and all the things they had done. I was really intimidated by all the work that had been done by those who pioneered our field. I have finally made it past that. I now know that I am never going to be able to stand on the same plane as them if I don't first stand up to begin. That is what my new year is about and from where I am standing now, it looks like things are finally moving forward!