Since I was a child, I have been interested in different cultures and languages. I loved to read about new places in travel books and atlases and imagine what it would be like to live in different parts of the world. I was lucky to grow up in a family that loved to travel and that encouraged me to explore as much as possible. I spent a lot of time hiking, going to museums, and visiting new places with my family. In college, I studied the Spanish language and traveled to Spain and Argentina. I knew that I wanted a job that would allow me to travel, learn, and meet new people, but I wasn’t sure what sort of job that would be.
During my third year of college, I discovered anthropology. Anthropology is at the simplest level the study of what it means to be human. Biological anthropologists study the evolution of humans, while archaeologists study the material artifacts created by humans. Cultural anthropologists study the diversity of human culture worldwide, and linguistic anthropologists focus specifically on how culture connects with language. I decided to go to graduate school to become a linguistic anthropologist since language is what interested me most.
