As I find myself getting ready to return to school, I have been thinking about all the things I said I wanted to be when I grew up. Occupational wise anyways. I know when I was real little I said I wanted to be a doctor. Well that didn't last long. I spent a lot of my childhood dealing with doctors and being in the hospital to ad nauseum.
Then I said I wanted to be an artist. The thought of being an artist has lasted with me throughout my life. I discovered that it is something that courses through my veins whether I like it or not. Once I found the other side of my genes, I found out that my brother was also great at drawing. Though his style is more comic book and horror. I wish I had taken a picture of the drawing of Spawn he had on a wall, when he was living in Florida. As I dug for my ancestors I found out that one of my great grandfathers on my dad's side was an artist and actually locally sold some of his art. My dad has one of his pieces of art. He painted on an oval mirror and it looks like a land scape. He made rocks out of clay and other pieces to give a 3D effect.
In that retrospect I have toyed with the idea recently about learning animation. I love animation. I doesn't even matter what style it is, I love animation. Even though I'm 32, I'm still a huge cartoon head. Thanks to Netflix, I get to re-watch old 80's and 90's cartoons. I hate to admit it but I'm watching Jem and the Holograms as we speak. The theme song is really catchy and sticks in your head. It's a real piece of 80's pop culture.
There is another part of me that is very strong and has stuck with me for a long time. When speaking about digging for ancestors, I have to profess my love for reading and researching history. My first love for history was reading about the American Revolution. I really think people should read or re read about our forefathers and their actual writings. Don't believe what comes out of the mouths of politicians about our forefathers, its really miss quoted and construed to their liking. Because of it I find myself wanting to re read about this incredible time in our history. When I see tea par tiers using the Don't Tread on me flag, it just really upsets me.
So up to about 5th 6th, I read a lot of American history. 6th grade, I started to learn about Egypt and the ancient world and I was hooked. I went to the field museum in Chicago that year and love it. I loved it so much I tinkered with the idea that I wanted to work there one day. There is a apart of me that still wants to work for the Field Museum. I told people that I wanted to be a historian. I have been reading and researching about ancient Egypt and the ancient world ever since.
About 8th grade someone had mention to me about being an Anthropologist. I wish I remember who that person was, because of them, my life hasn't been the same. What I really wanted to be was an archeologist. I love the thought of find missing pieces of history that we don't have. A person, an event, a piece of technology, or a work of art. I know that I can't be in a pit digging but I knew I wanted to be apart of the process. I like the idea of working in an archeology lab or being a curator. There is so much history we don't know or know little of. I like to think about the people and events we need to rediscover.
Anthropology/Archeology has stuck with me since I have learned about it. I still want work in the field.
I started to doubt myself a lot after I failed Latin and got dropped from UWM. The ancient world is what I wanted to my specialty to be. How can I be, when I failed at learning an ancient language? I have to reconcile with that.
As I have said before, I love researching and for the past 3 years I have been working on my family history. It's been emotional and even frustrating at times, but I have been using what I think is a natural talent to find my own missing pieces of my own history. All of my work is now on ancestry.com.
Other random occupations: Owning a pet photography studio, being a tornado chaser, cake decorator, ballroom dancer, paleontologist and documentary filmmaker.
Just remember boys and girls an archeologist recovers the remains of humans and what they have left behind, and paleontologist studies dinosaurs and other prehistoric animals. It's amazing how many people mix up the two.
I hope as I go back to school that I can combine the things I love into one satisfying occupation, that doesn't make me feel like I'm depriving one side of me. Most of all I don't want to hear you can't do that from the naysayers.
Regarding your taking Latin:
ReplyDeleteMaybe your problem was UWM. There are many ways to learn a language, but by far the most satisfying to me is having a text that I really want to study. Maybe it's a history, or just one inscription relevant to a topic you've chosen. Or maybe it's poetry. Then learning the language on purpose. Dipping into the textbook as needed. I know the usual textbook approach with Latin or Greek is to make you immediately memorize declensions, conjugations, tables ad nauseum. You'll have to do that eventually but having your goal text to work on will give you a personally meaningful outcome.
And by the way, Latin isn't the most important language to know in archaeology. French is! You'll need French or Italian to graduate and get a job, because you'll need to read modern scholarship in those languages.
And learning either one of those will make Latin that much easier, plus you can have a blast learning Italian in a non-traditional way.