Thursday, January 3, 2008

Major who? Minor major!

I've been doing a different, temporary, job for the past 3 weeks that entails answering phones, and tracking paperwork. Sooo, basically I'm a faux secretary. But, I'm not complaining because, as you can probably guess, I have quite a bit of down time. And despite what I may have done in the past, I am NOT abusing this little gem of an opportunity. Yeah, no, I'm actually spending the time looking on University of Washington's website, checking out all the different majors they offer. They have 140 different majors, and that doesn't include all the submajors of the majors. That probably wasn't proper terminology, but you get the idea. I'm starting with the Social Science degrees because it only seems right. Everything I'm interested in falls under a social science major; psychology, sociology, anthropology, communication, etc. Anyway, so far I have looked into Anthropology, and I am now even more excited to take a pertaining class. See, each major has it's own separate site that goes into detail about the submajors, which is really cool! Because I discovered that I like the sound of environmental anthropology and biocultural anthropology, but not necessarily archaeology, or medical and sociocultural anthropology. I will copy and paste the descriptions from the site:

LIKE:
  • environmental anthropology, the analysis of human-environment interactions across the full range of sociocultural variation, from the earliest societies to the present
  • biocultural anthropology, the study of the evolution and adaptation of the human species, the nonhuman primates, and the modern human populations
DO NOT LIKE:
  • archaeology, the exploration of human prehistory through evidence of past human activities
  • medical anthropology, the study of health, illness, healing and medicine as part of social and cultural life
  • sociocultural anthropology, the study of cultural diversity of the human species, including recurrent global flux in languages, practices, and identities.

Aaaand, that's pretty much how far I've gotten with my research. Though I'm excited to eventually look into sociology and communication, as well as psychology. Their psychology school used to be in the top 20 in the nation, but I can't get free access to the current listing, so who knows where they rank now. That's not the important part though; it's a really good school and it's in WA, so it's cheaper for me. And that last part, yeah that's the important part. *wink*

That stuff is all for the future though. Right now I'm in Math107, which is College Algebra. Okay, well I guess I'm not technically "in" it, since the term doesn't start until Jan 21, but I'm enrolled. I'm actually going to start ALS (Airmen Leadership School) on Monday, so that should successfully fill the college holiday break gap I would have had otherwise (thanks AF!). Yeah, ALS is required before I can sew on my next stripe. And more stripes = more $$$! And more $$$ is always good. So instead of a SrA (Senior Airman), I will be a SSgt (Staff Seargent). There's not a big difference really, except that SSgt's have to evaluate/rate people. Anyway, the AF gives you college credit for ALS, so that puts me only 1 or 2 classes away from a CCAF (Community College of the Air Force) degree. It's not that special really, in the civilian world anyway, but it looks good on your EPRs (Enlisted Performance Reports) or your evaluation. Besides that, it's a good short term goal for while I'm here on Okinawa. My slightly longer short term goal is to get my AA, which will happen before I leave. Ultimately though, I really want to be no more than 1 year away from a BS when I leave, but that requires more research on my end first. Either way, I'll be better equipped for college life if I have a nice big chunk of credits under my belt. So I'm just going to keep pluggin' away at the req'd classes, and hope I can adequately keep up with everything else in the meantime...wish me luck?

3 comments:

Unknown said...

heeeyyy...so lots of my friends majored in anthropology (though mostly cultural anthropology), and I'm sure they'd be happy to talk to you. I took "field methods in peace and conflict studies," which is an anthro course, so I could probably answer some questions, too. I'm glad you have a blog!

Anonymous said...

Sounds like you are finally getting somewhere with your research of areas to focus on! I'll look for stuff from this end, too. Now you won't have time to look with ALS, though!
Have fun "learning to lead!!"

Anonymous said...

Good luck!! I know how dedicated you are to this, and you know I am with you all the way. Have you applied for the GIbill upgrade yet? I keep forgetting to do that, but its in my pda! You should add that to your list too!

ILY! miss you TONS
-D