I grew up in a small-ish town in Missouri. Thanks to my parents, higher education was always my goal. I wanted to graduate from college and then probably graduate from grad school. Starting in middle school, I knew I wanted to go to law school. Well, that time has come. I’m currently writing this 20 days before I begin my 1L year, and I can’t help but reflect on my higher education journey. In addition, I’ll reflect on the massive higher-education shifts occurring right now.

I’m writing this blog post on stolen land with a laptop that is almost certainly the product of the exploitation of labor (including the labor of children). In many ways, the modern ways of life are coming to eat us. Climate change is leading to parts of Earth becoming inhospitable (as I write this, 2023 is on track to be the hottest year every, and the past 3 days have been the record hottest days every recorded), the mines required to dig up rare earth minerals are poisoning the workers, and the Western lifestyle relies on slaves to make it possible. The people most responsible for climate change are the ones the most insualted from it. It’s the global poor who make our shit that’s going to face the brunt of the consequences.

I have complicated feelings about this country. What I mean by that is… well a lot of things. There are many problems with the United States. I acknolwedge that and begrudge it. Our democracy is deeply flawed, based on an electoral system devised by a bunch of White dudes who were worried about giving too much power to commoners. Despite all of this, I still believe in the promise of America. I love the idea of this nation, but it has a hard time living up to that ideal.

One of the most fascinating parts of data science to me is machine learning. Before I started my anthropology class, the only context I heard about machine learning in is Apple and Google using it to improve user experience on their devices. I had no idea about the wide world of machine learning. Now, I’m using machine learning to model and understand the anthropological data I collected from D-Place.

I’m in college, and I’m currently taking an anthropology course. Now, this course isn’t your standard anthropology course because it’s focused heavily on the data science aspect of anthropology. This is something new to me. Before this year, I never tried out data science, but it was one taste and I was hooked. Now, I’m really delving into the code of it all, and I’ve refound my coding passion. So, over the next couple of months, I’ll probably publish even more articles incorporating a mix of anthropology and data science, and I hope y’all enjoy that!

Introduction  I feel like there comes a time in everyone’s life where they have to feel unique in some way. Me personally, I think I expressed my “uniqueness” by being gay. Yes, I’m being serious. While obviously I didn’t choose to be gay so I could be unique, I did make being gay part of my personality, so it set me apart from my other peers. Nowadays, this isn’t so much the case. I don’t care about being unique anymore, really. I just like being me, and according to my friends, they like that too (though, my anxiety makes me unsure of how much I can trust them lol). Anyway, I say all of this because I think it’s important to note that the phenomenon I’m about to talk about is NOT unique to a group of people; everyone is trying to be unique and set themselves apart. It’s just a manifestation of a struggle that’s been going on since teenage subcultures were a thing. This is not meant to be a judgy article, rather it’s meant to be an understanding one.

I’m not religious. Never really have been. I went to church when I was younger, but that was because my parents went. I started forming my own thoughts on religion when I was around 11 years old, and it all didn’t make sense to me. Unfortunately, the first incarnation of my irreligiosity was militant atheism. Honestly, I think this is how many people start out with being non-religious. It feels like you’ve been told this lie your whole life and now you want everyone to know it’s a lie. Also, you see Christians trying to convert others, so why shouldn’t you try as well? Of course, when you do this you just come off as a douchebag. Eventually you realize how much of a colossal douche you are and you tone things down. You realize religion is a very personal experience, and you shouldn’t deny other people’s feelings. (Well, most people come to recognize this. Others (cough cough Sam Harris and Richard Dawkins cough cough) never move past the militant phase.)

I talked about this on my About page, but I also wanted to delve into this in my first post on this site. If you’re visiting this blog and you know me, then you’ll also know I’ve had many, MANY blogs before it. Well, that’s a bit of an exaggeration, but I have tried maintaining a blog several times before this current one. I always fail, and I always end up going months and months between posts. Well, on this iteration of myself blogging, I’m considering that a-okay. I may upload multiple times a day or only a few times a year, and you know what? It doesn’t really matter to me.