When I started
at Bryn Mawr, I thought I was going to be
an
archaeologist. I loved history I loved
objects of people's past and I was
fortunate enough to
go on a dig the
summer after my first year and realized
that the dirt wasn't for me but the
history and the past still was.  So I
switched gears a little bit to study
biological anthropology, but the idea
is
still the same understanding people and
their personal histories; their lived
histories.  My first year here I took a
forensic anthropology class and we had
a hands-on assignment where 
we went to the
University of Pennsylvania Museum of
Anthropology and we were just given
a skeleton. And the assignment was, basically, tell me everything about these
remains. So not only did I find out that
this was a young woman who had had
children and broken ribs but I learned
about her history and the experience
she had several thousand years before me
across the globe you know when you study
culture there's a lot of nuance to it.
By studying culture in anthropology we
really see not only the way people live,
the way that they look at the world. But
also we start to learn how we can
ethically study people, as well, how we
can be informed in our research to make sure
that we're respecting people, knowing
about their cultures and properly
portraying them.
