The Plan
Constraints
Before I talk about any specific plans, here are my personal constraints:
- I currently work full time as a software engineer, and my financial commitments are such that I need to keep working.
- I have agreed to stay in Maricopa County (the Phoenix area) until both of my children are grown (until the Summer of 2009).
Some History
My plan for becoming an anthropologist has changed several times since 1994. To be honest, I didn't know much about how to get there when I started. But while taking a graduate course in Southwestern Archaeology at Arizona State University, I spoke at length with my professor. He was on the graduate program selection committee at the time, and provided me with many insights into the workings of Anthropology graduate schools in general, and ASU in particular.
So, I cooked up my first big plan in 1995, which focused on applying to the ASU graduate Anthro program without first having an undergraduate degree in Anthropology. The approach centered around taking graduate courses from professors currently serving on the selection committee, impressing the heck out of them, and then applying.
After completing ASB 567 and doing well, I registered for another graduate course at ASU. The course was during the day, ASU's campus was a long way from my workplace, and I had two small children... needless to say, I had trouble making the situation work. I withdrew from the course, and went several years without taking any classes at all.
A New Plan
I decided this year (2004) that it was now or never, and registered for a summer school course: ASB 102 (Intro to Social and Cultural Anthropology). I was glad to be back in the hunt, and made an appointment with an advisor at ASU. He spoke with me at length, and we concluded that I needed a new approach: Get the B.A. in Anthropology first.
So... why get a bachelor's degree? The advisor pointed out a few facts: 1. My chances of getting into the graduate program without a B.A. in Anthropology were pretty much zero; 2. There's only one University in the Phoenix area; and 3. I'm not going anywhere until 2009. So, I decided to get the B.A. in Anthro. This has three advantages:
- I'll at least have a degree, which can get me some archaeology work and make it easier to get accepted into another graduate program
- I will hopefully have impressed some of my professors sufficently to get some good recommendation lettters
- What else am I going to do for the next five years, anyway?
The Details
For a B.A. in Anthropology at Arizona State I'll need to complete the following coursework (per the ASU Antropology undergraduate curriculum):- Required Courses - Requirements Met
ASB 102 Intro Social/Cultural Anthropology - Summer 2004
ASM 104 Stones, Bones, and Human Evolution - Fall 2005
ASB 222 Buried Cites/Lost Tribes - Fall 1994 - Linguistics (Pick ONE)- Requirements Met
ASB 480 Intro to Linguistics - Fall 2007
ASB 481 Linguistics and Culture - Sociocultural Anthropology (Pick TWO) - Requirements Met
ASB 202 Ethnic Relations in the United States
ASB 211 Women in Other Cultures
ASB 311 Principles of Social Anthropology - Spring 2005
ASB 314 Comparative Religion - Fall 2004
ASB 350 Anthropology and Art
ASB 351 Psychological Anthropology
ASB 353 Death and Dying in Cross-Cultural Perspective
ASB 411 Kinship and Social Organization (or ASB 311) - Archaeology (Pick TWO) - Requirements Met
ASB 231 Intro to Archaeology Field Methods - Summer 1996
ASB 330 Principles of Archaeology - Fall 1999
(there are others, but I'm already finished) - Physical Antropology (Pick TWO)
ASM 246 Human Origins
ASM 301 Peopling of the World
ASM 341 Human Osteology Lab - Fall 2006
ASM 342 Human Biological Variation
ASM 343 Primatology
ASM 344 Fossil Hominids
ASM 345 Disease and Human Evolution - Fall 2008
ASM 348 Social Issues and Human Genetics
ASM 452 Dental Anthropology
ASM 454 Comparative Primate Anatomy
ASM 455 Primate Behavior Laboratory - Area Archaeology (Pick ONE) - Requirements Met
ASB 334 Arctic Anthropology
ASB 335 Prehistory of the Southwest
ASB 337 Prehispanic Civilizations of Middle America
ASB 338 Archaeology of North America
ASB 362 Old World Prehistory II
ASB 494 Eastern Arctic
ASB 498 Old World Prehistory III
ASM 301 Peopling of the World
ASB 567 Southwest Archaeology - Spring 1995 - Area Ethnography (Pick ONE) - Requirements Met
ASB 319 The North American Indian
ASB 321 Indians of the Southwest - "L": Fall 2005
ASB 322 Indians of Mesoamerica
ASB 323 Indians of Latin America
ASB 324 Peoples of the Pacific
ASB 325 Peoples of Southeast Asia
ASB 485 U.S.-Mexican Borderlands in Comparative Perspective - Statistics (Pick ONE) - Requirements Met
ASM 494 Quantitative Methods in Anthropological Research - Spring 2006 - Anthropology Elective (Pick ONE) - Requirements Met
ASB 322 Peoples of Mesoamerica - Spring 2007 - General Studies Literacy Requirement (Pick ONE)
ASB 394 Urban Life and Politics - In Progress
- Foreign Language Proficiency Requirement
SPA 101 Beginning Spanish - In Progress
SPA 102 Beginning Spanish - Summer II
SPA 201 Intermediate Spanish - Fall 2008
SPA 202 Intermediate Spanish - Spring 2009
I'll decide each semester what to take based upon course availability and scheduling (a MWF class at 9:40am doesn't fit in well with my full-time job).
General Studies Requirements - UPDATE
As new catalogs are released, things keep getting better and better for me. The Liberal Arts College has dropped a lot of their mandated courses (e.g. the Bridge course), leaving such decisions to the various departments within the college.
Acccording the the 2006-07 Catalog, my only deficiencies (outside of Anthhropology requirements) are that I need a "Literacy and Critical Inquiry" [L] course, and a "Humanities and Fine Arts" [HU] course. It turns out that a course I am taking for my major anyway works for the HU course (ASB 337), and I can take the Intro to Museums course (ASB 471) for the L requirement.
Foreign Language
Did I mention that foreign language proficiency is required for the Bachelor of Arts degree? Yep, I'll be taking four semesters of Spanish somewhere along the way. The advisor at ASU recommended that I start on the Spanish RIGHT AWAY, so I can get it behind me and focus on Anthropology. I've been putting it off, however.
Why Spanish? Well, as the advisor said, being able to communicate in Spanish can help me get archaeology field work anywhere from here down to Tierra del Fuego.
