They think I should be a what?

[fajrdrako]

I got this from txvoodoo:

1. Go to http://www.careercruising.com/.
2. Put in Username: nycareers, Password: landmark.
3. Take their "Career Matchmaker" questions.
4. Post the top ten results.

txvoodoo added this bit to it, so that's what I did: Bold items are jobs I currently do or have done in the past, italic items are jobs I've considered doing or wanted to do, and strikethrough items are things I've no interest in doing.

1. Anthropologist - #1 on my list? Astounding!
2. Website Designer - Yes, this I like doing.
3. Desktop Publisher
4. Animator - Doesn't this need talent?
5. Cartoonist / Comic Illustrator - I can't draw! Otherwise, I'd love it.
6. Actor - Again, talent is a requirement. Otherwise appealing. Except for the long hours, physical energy required, and the huge dependency on luck.
7. Computer Network Specialist
8. Criminologist
9. Multimedia Developer - I don't even know what that means.
10. Costume Designer
11. Activist
12. Computer Animator
13. Comedian - Aw, c'mon, that's got to be a joke!
14. Political Aide
15. Critic ...skipping a few...
18. Writer - At last!
And then down to 29. Historian - Took them long enough!

I am not impressed.

Comments

[dewline.livejournal.com]

About the drawing thing? We need to talk.

[fajrdrako.livejournal.com]

Right!

[walkingowl.livejournal.com]

You drew a line through your #1 result?...something I'd give ten years of my life to be able to be doing? That ties it -- you and I are not the same person, eh? heh

(You don't know which ten years of my life I meant. They weren't very happy years, let's just say!)

[fajrdrako.livejournal.com]

Anthropology has never appealed to me, though I suppose there are ways in which I like reading about it. History and sociology interest me, but anthropology implies a self/other division between the studier and the studied that I don't like. But that may not even be true. I am unclear in my head on the difference between sociology and anthropology, though the latter implies (to me) the temporal angle - how mankind has physiologically changed in evolutionary times.

That doesn't interest me because it's impersonal: humans as physical objects rather than individuals.

[walkingowl.livejournal.com]

Actually, sociology is the one that keeps a strict divider between "the studier" and "the studied." It even uses terminology that enforces this beyond a shadow of a doubt -- this is the social science which uses the terms "research subjects," after all. On the ohter hand, anthropology is seen as excessively touch-feely by sociologists, who cling to their illusions of objectivity come hell or high water. This is a holdover from the Structuralism of sociologist Talcott Parsons, of the 1950s and 1960s, which itself emerged in the same intellectual environment that spawned B.F. Skinner's behavioralist branch of psychology -- the school of thought that holds immanently true (religiously-toned adverb intentional!) that human beings have no free will and can be conditioned to do just about anything.

On the other hand, anthropologists have always been warned by our professors against the ignomy of "going native," which to me sounds more or less like one of the benefits of the science itself -- hear of a nifty group of people, go study them to get to understand their systems on their own terms, and then mail all your notebooks home and just stay there.

Interesting that you have the notion that these two branches of social science are actually each other. Did you have a bad experience with a hidebound anthropology professor, once upon a time?

[fajrdrako.livejournal.com]

Well, I'm not always impressed with sociology, either!

I don't think absolute objectivity is possible - or desirable - in any discipline. But rationality it, and an open mind, and combinations of good common sense and informed judgement.

I chuckle at your notions of going native. Depending on the natives - it could be fun!

I've never studied either anthropology or sociology. I just read a lot of books.

[auriaephiala.livejournal.com]

Mine was even less applicable.

[fajrdrako.livejournal.com]

Let's not buy their services, hmm?

[sparklebutch.livejournal.com]

There's what I'd *like* to do, and what I'm *skilled* to do. They are not the same thing. At all.

[fajrdrako.livejournal.com]

So what would you like to do?

I'd like to be a historian, and I like to think I'm very skilled at it. Sadly, there are not a lot of historian's jobs around.

[sparklebutch.livejournal.com]

That's a very good question.

First thing that comes to mind would be.. archeology, anthropology, history... but then, maybe something with growing vegetables. The more I think of it, the more things that are shiny I can think of. If given enough time I can make a list that has about 50 different fields in it :)

[fajrdrako.livejournal.com]

Yes, all those things are fascinating. I wouldn't mind being a tour guide or an editor or doing something on boats.