Your Hearts Desire

As you know if you read yesterday’s post, I successfully completed my first postgrad semester in ages.

 

I graduated from Uni in mid 2009, after finishing school, taking one year off, doing one year of Uni, taking two years off, then finishing the last two years of my degree.

 

In anthropology the common path is to do honours, then a PhD, then an academic career. I didn’t have passionate enough interest in any of my lecturers study areas to take an honours year. But ever since I graduated, the feeling of needing to study more to get up to an acceptable standard of education for my industry hasn’t left me.

 

 

I have tried and tried so damn hard to find my “thing” to go with my degree in anthropology. Every time I studied, it didn’t work out, for so many reasons.

 

I took a gamble at the start of this year and enrolled in a graduate certificate program that has a masters “attached” that I can do if I want. The subject I took this semester was more sociology, technically, but it was taught by an anthropologist.

 

For the first time since 2009, it clicked. I “got” things.

 

Because I was back studying in the area that my brain understands. 

 

Even if I was to fail my final essay (and therefore the whole subject) it has still been an invaluable semester to me for personal development.

 

I registered a URL some time ago – and the time is approaching to find a way to develop it into a freelance business. But the way I want to do it is unusual for social sciences. And it’s a very difficult area to talk about with pretty much any type of business coach because social sciences (and applied social sciences) are not well understood in business. And I am unclear on exactly what I can offer in the way I am structuring it. But these are details I can sort out. Eventually.

 

This morning was serendipitous. While I was mulling over the end of uni for the semester, I read this article (shared by Mel Kettle on Twitter) about how a French hospital is putting in a wine bar to give terminal patients a sense of normality and quality of life. I loved it no matter what, but at the bottom there was a comment about having a social anthropologist assisting staff and families who use the bar. Triple love for people realising the value of social anthropology.

 

Then I came across this article. It’s a commencement speech given in an anthropology department about the value of anthropology. And I cried on the bus. Because it spoke to me very, very deeply.

 

I don’t know what my future is, or how I’m going to do it, but I do know that this is the framework that I need to move forwards, because it is my hearts desire.

 

On a side note, the title for this post came from a great Facebook group I’m in. My Name, My Brand. It’s a wonderful community for small/sole business owners & I’d suggest you look it up!