A Clear Head and More Excitement than I Can Contain

Well, you're not going to believe this, but I think a light went on that has afforded me some focus in my thinking about graduate school and my areas of expertise. Guess what -- I want to go into cultural and linguistic anthropology! This concept makes so much sense to me that it has left me utterly giddy. This all started when I had a freak-out while I was taking a first stab at getting some words on paper for my personal statement in application to Simmons College. I was having a really hard time coming up with anything more than an elevator pitch about teaching literature and cultural studies (and indeed, I have no desire to teach in a public school, so that was a big hold-up as well). I just kept writing and writing while the stream of conscious was flowing out of me and I put a couple of things together about myself -- namely, that I enjoy studying human beings. How exciting! Don't get me wrong -- I love ripping into a piece of literature, but my true excitement has always been found in trying to get a big picture view of a topic, and to find the symbolic systems at work in a given text, whether literature, a magazine, an advertisement, or any kind of social discourse. -- trying to really understand things like "What does culture mean?" "What is culture?" "How is it produced?" "Who identifies with 'culture,' and who manufactures culture with which people identify?" Given the variety of my interests, I had spent a few years looking perhaps a bit too deeply and failed to see the connection between all of them -- anthropology.

I even know of a few projects that I am interested in pursuing -- refugee communities within already poor rural communities and the interrelated racial and economic tensions (looking at Somalian refugees in Lewiston, ME, for example), and also the relationships between class and cultural identity. What happens when someone doesn't identify with their class, or when part of their class shifts? What is someone's real relationship to class? I am also interested in the economic and social influences of what choices people making in identitying with political parties and party views -- or not. I am interested in doing ethnographic case studies and possibly gaining some quantitative research skills.

This big picture explains so many of the different kinds of issues I was trying to wrap my head around while I was at Hampshire: religion, intellectual history, world views during moments captured in literature, identity theory, Marxist theory, philosophy, etc. I also have checked out various university websites just to make sure that the class selections within anthropology departments match with my concept of what it must be, and it sure does. So, yes. I think this is something I will pursue. I feel clearer-headed than I have in ages.

Anyway, I'm really excited. On that note, I still plan on applying to Simmons' Gender and Cultural Studies MA and MAT program (but it would be social sciences, not English, most likely) because it looks like its foci could still suit my needs. But I am also considering looking at Brandeis and Northeastern look really good to me.