A PhD in People Watching

It’s always interesting telling people what I am doing next year. All the other twenty-something graduates are either all getting jobs, starting their stream of disposable income, getting married, or moving away to settle in somewhere far away (or at least far enough away from their parents). But when people ask me what I’m doing, I essentially have to tell them I’m still going to school for another 6+ years.

What’s more, when I tell them I’m going into a PhD program, there’s a faint level of recognition- though I’m uncertain if that reaction is pity or confusion. But when they ask what I’m getting my PhD in and I tell them “cultural anthropology” I’m amazed by how many people ask me “what is that?” I must appear to be quite the oddity to them.

But it’s a good experience for me to have skepticism and curiosity laid across my life. It forces me to continuously ask myself “why am I studying this? What am I even studying?” And, perhaps unfortunately, my ability to articulate the answers to these questions is rather limited. Certainly, I did it well enough to get into my program and I’m very excited about it. But there is something far more nebulous and exciting that is driving me along this line that I cannot quite convert into words.

Ultimately, I am fascinated by watching my world denaturalized in many respects, and watching the kinds of optimism that comes from that. The ways in which we make sense of our world (and here, I’m speaking in the broadest ‘we’ possible) and how our orderings create worlds we did not expect. I absolutely love that. But how do you explain that to someone who still thinks you’re just crazy to keep going on to get a PhD in people watching?