Yesterday, I woke up to an email from the San Diego Community College District saying my application for graduation was reviewed, approved, and the degree awarded! Boom!
I don’t need a cap-and-gown commencement ceremony to mark the moment. This milestone is attained, whether with speeches and streamers or – perhaps how I prefer it – quietly crossing the line and moving steadily on to the next goal.
Speaking of which, now I have an AA in Anthropology from City College to update my BA in Communications with knowledge more relevant to becoming an archaeologist. I’m about a third of the way through the field excavation class, which leaves one more class for the Certificate in Archaeology. And, I’ve been working as an archaeological field tech for over seven months.
The way I see it, my job still deals with material culture: how people navigate their lives and use stuff to achieve their goals. It’s just that now, instead of looking for human behavior patterns in order to intercept/interrupt/manipulate/profit from them, I’m looking for those same patterns in an effort to understand the things that unite us all as humans over space and time.
My pivot from exploitation to exploration is accelerating, and that feels good.
