Wow! I am pumped to see I have someone interested!! Hahaha...I just saw your comments from a previous blog and i obviously did not address them in the blog I just posted so let me get to that right now :)
1) What does your new major entail? What sort of job path, etc?
The new major is something that I wanted to chose from the beginning of my college career like 5.5 years ago or whatever it was...I just decided against it since i was not going to be required to take any physics or chem, which i felt would hindered my med-school path. There is a lot of different thing you can do with anthro as far as research goes, but most reverts back to teaching at universities, which I am clearly not interested in. I am using the degree to get me into forensic anthro (we all know I have always loved forensics). With forensic anthro you are invited onto cases when body parts that are unidentifiable by other sources are found by investigators. It can be whole skeletons, or fragments of body or bone. My job is to identify the stats on who the person may have been. Sometimes you can even get some DNA and whatnot. So basically it is a big puzzle. However, as you can imagine you may not get onto that many cases a year so most forensic anthropologists have other jobs as well. I'm looking into working for a coroners office or something like that cause right now I can't imagine teaching and I have read that they work there a lot of times, but I'm not exactly sure of what they would do there. Once I graduate from UCSD I have to go back to grad school immediately, because you have to get a masters and possibly even a PhD in bio or archaeological anthro in order to get a job in forensic anthro. I am really excited about this. I have been looking at programs that offer bio anthro or physical anthro with an emphasis in forensics and I have pretty much looked at just about every school in the US and found 4 that I am interested in (it was hard to find them it's pretty rare). so in fall '10 I will hopefully be accepting into one of these programs at either Boston University, University of Florida, NYU, or Penn State. I am hoping mostly for Boston!!
2) What made you change your mind?
I had been doing some soul searching at the time. I had really come to the realization that with my lack of competitive grades I was not going to be a "shoe in" into any med school. Possibly some shitty one, but I wanted to stay coastal, any coast. so I may have got in somewhere that I really didn't want to go, and that didn't sit well with me. Plus the thought of another 2 full years of school, plus one year off in between, plus another 4 made me want to puke...I was going to be far too old before I made any kind of money or could settle down wherever I wanted. I really lost interest in it as well. I have always had forensics in the back of my mind, but didn't want to be a investigator or something because I like specialization. I started looking into specialties and this anthropology deal sounded exactly like what I was looking for. I chose Human bio because I am fascinated by the human body. I really haven't learned much about it despite the 900 classes i have taken. I started looking back into the major I had originally wanted and realized it was muuuuuch more what I was looking for and decided that it was insane for me to stay with the major that i was in since I only chose it because it was the closest to the bio anthro which i decided against only because of med school which i had all ready decided I was not doing anymore. So I went in and spoke to the undergrad advisor of the department and was on the road to success. So basically, I have wasted about 3 years working on shit for my other major, but I guess I don't feel like it is a total waste because I did love chem and i am glad to know all that crap that i would have never taken if i wasn't forced!
3) When is the soonest Jay could leave?
Jay could leave any day after he passes this physical deal. He can test every week until he passes. You have to train really hard for it, but by trying to pass every week it is like training so he took it last week more as a training cause he knew there was no way he would pass the swim. So of course he didn't pass. but he will be down here training in Coronado a couple times a week. He said it's insane and some of the guys are NUTS! It must be pretty bad because Jay is all ready in great shape and he said he almost passed out. hahah...out of control. I really want him to leave soon so that we can get it over with. Really it won't be over with though because most likely whereever I go for grad school he won't be able to be there. We shall see. It is all going to suck pretty damn bad, but we figure that at least when all is done we can enjoy our lives and know that we are doing exactly what we want to be doing and didn't sacrifice our dreams just to not leave eachothers sides. My program is only 2 years so I figure that is not too bad.
Hope i answered it all for you!! I wanted to put it all in the original post, but i didn't think anyone cared for me to go that in depth! Keep reading I'll try to keep up on the posts!!
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