After my failed unvieristy sojourn into medicine, I wound up "finding" anthropology. It became my major, and I whizzed through those classes with little struggle at all. I studied biological anthropology as my main focus of interest (you know, "the monkeys"). Cultural anthropology was, I felt, too touchy-feely. Since it is all about observation and preservation of other cultures, I couldn't see myself being tolerant enough to study it. I mean, if I were in a foreign country, studying another culture, it would be difficult for me to accept or not intervene if they were, for instance, hurting a child or a woman. Not like I am a flag-waving member of a superpower nation or anything, I wouldn't be introducing hair driers and cappucino or anything, but things like female circumcision...nope, wouldn't handle that well at all.

In college I even took a course on Egyptology. At one point, I was able to name all of the rulers in all of the dynasties, including the length of their reign. Fucking useless info, in other words.

I also studied archeology for a long time, and took part in a dig on a former Native American site. I was so bad at it, imagine me trying to have the patience digging a one meter by one meter square, scraping the bottom and then sifting all the dirt, in the 102 degree Texas sun in July. After that summer, I switched and worked in a lab processing the Native American artifacts that the other poor suckers had to dig up. I found the whole ordeal very, very dull. I have never felt the need to return to archeology since.

But another side branch of anthropology, linguistics, really captured my imagination. I absolutely loved those courses about language and the acquisition of language. Yes I know-I'm a complete loser. But it was utterly fascinating to me (and still is.) I also studied a lot of language in college-French and English were my minors (well, that's the French language and English composition anyway), and I took four years of Russian. I used to be able to speak both French and Russian, but I have found that Swedish has come in and pushed all the other languages out of my brain. Last year I was in Paris for business, and I trotted out my rusty French, only to find that I was talking gibberish, mashing together sentences of bastardized French and Swedish.

Now I work in telecom with, as my friend calls it, a "thoroughly inappropriate education." I am not sure if I ever told him that I was working on my Master's Degree before I moved to Sweden, and I was working in telecom then. My degree was going to be in, of all things, the history of ideas. The degree was a hodgepodge of English, philosophy, psychology, and anthropology. I just don't see why I have to get a degree in accounting or achitecture if it doesn't interest me, simply to get "a good job". I have what could be defined as "a good job". My thoroughly inappropriate education aside, I have found that if you work very hard (80 hours a week, anyone?) and want it enough then you can have any "good job", despite your background.

I would love to go back to school. Absolutely love it. I don't romanticize my college times, they were very hard and difficult times. I never lived in the dorm, I never joined a sorority. I worked two or three jobs and lived in shit appartments in order to get through. I remember one place I lived in with two roommates-it was so bad, you had to reach around the corner and turn the lights on in the room, wait five minutes, and then you could walk in-all this in order to let the cockroaches find a place to hide before you entered.

I would love to go back to school to study more things. It's ironic that you go to university when you are so young-it should be the norm to go when we are older, more mature, have seen the world and actually know what we want to be when we grow up.

I have no regrets over my studies. Even all the time I spent memorizing those stupid Egyptian dynasties. At least I can free up the memory space for that in the dusty corners of my brain, and try to fill it with interesting life stuff. Like the best places to kiss a man. What are the decent red wines. How to drive to my favorite coffee shop while avoiding as many red lights as possible.

-H.

Posted by: Everydaystranger at 09:46 AM | No Comments | Add Comment
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