The Professor Begins: Anthropology in Action

I've never been the kind of blogger that apologizes for being too busy with school to blog, so this is a first for me. I started teaching last week, and let me just say that it's harder than you might think. There's an extensive amount of planning and preparation that takes place when you're lecturing.

You start thinking. Should I just create a Powerpoint presentation with lots of visuals and limited textual information. Should I use the whiteboard to convey my opinion, even though for most of the class time your back will be to the students? Should I memorize the information and hope I don't read from some note cards like I'm in sixth grade speech class.

Well, the easier approach for me was Powerpoints, with a splash of whiteboard thrown in. Except today, for some odd reason, my lecture was not showing on my traveldrive. Talk about going old school when all of your information is missing. It certainly helps if you know the information beforehand, and why not, you are the teacher.

To be clear, I'm not teaching anthropology classes. I'm teaching ESOL, but my class is a melting pot of cultural diversity, so my anthropology background is an enormous help, especially when I'm dissecting the nuances of language. Language is a large part of our identity, and I told myself that I would never force a student of mine to discard any part of their heritage in order to function in American society.

This is the approach I've decided to take in the classroom, and I thank my anthropology professors for providing me a broader cultural outlook and an understanding of diversity, to be successful.

In the last couple of months, I have received several emails about what you can actually do with an anthropology degree. I think the main reason I took the approach that I did, that being teaching, is because of a 3 hour meeting I had with my anthropology methods and theory teacher during my last semester at UCF. He told me to never do something because you like it. Do it because you love it! I told him about my natural affinity towards language and my love of ancient and archaic languages (unspoken). He told me to find a way to combine archaeology, anthropology, and teaching, which is exactly what I decided to do.

Do I dig in the dirt all the time like many of you? No, I honestly don't. I'm getting older, not that much older, and digging in a ditch all day long can be really hard on your body. It also takes you away from all of those young minds you could be molding. So, I look for digs during the summer. I visit local archaeology sites, and tell the local stories that aren't being told.

I think when you initially have a plan, like I did when I started Ancient Digger years ago, you do your best to follow it. Sometimes you are just presented with something completely different. For me, I was dead set on research. Get in the dirt and write about it. That was my motto. Then, along came a graduate class, where I was required to work with students, and teach them history and culture. I was hooked from the beginning.

I tried to fight it. I tried to stop myself from making elaborate lesson plans, and looking for pictures, which represented every point in history, from the civilization of Ur to Napoleon. It was like a disease, and I'm glad to say that I have been infected.

So to answer the question as to how you can actually use your anthropology degree to get a job, well, think outside of the box. The dollar signs are not inside that trench. However, you may be a university professor digging inside that trench during the summer, and you may teach the rest of the year, or curate in a museum. Either way, do it because you love it, and be as flexible as possible. The money will eventually come.

As for Ancient Digger, I would like to share as much of myself as possible, even if it's not always about archaeological finds. My life is a combination of archaeology, anthropology, and language teaching, so my hope is to share with you all of the things that can change when you plan a future in anthropology.