Student Bio
- Fourth year undergraduate student at UTM
- Double major in Anthropology (Science) and Psychology
- Hoping to become a primary school teacher
"You need a whole variety of courses to become a primary school teacher, and anthropology has definitely prepared me for that."
Path to anthropology
I took the two first-year courses, ANT101 and ANT102. If you want a huge overview, take those two courses. They are fantastic courses; one is biological-based (Introduction to Biological Anthropology and Archaeology), and one is more sociocultural (Introduction to Sociocultural and Linguistic Anthropology), so you get that even divide of arts and sciences.
Discovering anthropology science
It wasn't until I took ANT201 World Prehistory that I realized, “I love this”! The professor made it very interesting.
I took another course, ANT220 Introduction to the Anthropology of Health, and that just kind of tumbled the ball. I switched over into the anthropology program. ANT220 is a wonderful course, I highly recommended it even if you don't have to take it. Take it, it's great.
Anthropology of health + psychology
"I study psychology and anthropology; I’m super human-centered. I study the body, I study the culture."
The anthropology of health holistically looks at the entire body, your brain, your health, how your physical health affects your mental health, how your mental health may affect your physical health; and it's sort of just like a whole cycle of the body and how it interacts with the world.
Anthropology as preparation for teacher's college
I’m still deciding where to go and what to do. I am hoping to become a primary school teacher, so I will be applying to teacher's college. Becoming a primary school teacher, you need a whole variety of courses, so anthropology has definitely prepared me for that. I need to take biology courses, I need to take sociocultural courses.
Learning about how education has changed over the years - that's anthropology - and seeing how children develop throughout the years - that's anthropology as well - so all of that is totally applicable to where I want to go.
"I really recommend ANT338, which is Lab Methods in Biological Anthropology."
You learn about nutrition, you learn about how to measure people, how to graph, child development and child growth, which is like very interesting. Bravo to TAs and the professor who did an amazing job converting that class to an online setting. It was very funny, but we measured our roommates to understand their growth patterns, so it was just a super engaging course even though it was online. I think if it was in person it would have been a fantastic course either way. You test out accelerometers, which is kind of like a scientific fitbit, so it's really fun.
"I went out and I searched for opportunities."
I took a leap and applied for the UTM Anthropology Society for one of the leadership roles, which was fantastic. I got to run events, I got to contribute to events, so that was fantastic.
I also reached out to the Centre for Student Engagement about volunteer projects. I did a social innovation project, which is how we work with one of our community partners to build a kind of big project. I hosted a huge event at the end of March for high school students, preparing them for post-secondary, and then hosted alternative reading week, which is during our winter reading week. We help a community partner over three days, which is a lot of fun.
Advice for students
Opportunities at UTM
There's a lot of volunteerism, there are a lot of opportunities, even if you just go out and search around UTM. People are always looking for help, and we're always looking for new experiences, so it's awesome.
Icons by the Noun Project.