Hello All,
I've posted here once before in the fall. For those of you who don't remember I sought advice on how to approach graduate school despite a crippling undergrad GPA (). You guys were really helpful then, so I thought I could ask you another question now.
While I still have a steep, steep uphill struggle to look forward to in regards to getting admitted into a program, I have been stepping in the right direction by working as a research assistant for the Smithsonian's NMNH Anthro Dept. and I will be heading off to do anthropology fieldwork (conveniently involving the exact kind of anthropology I'm interested in) this summer. Down the road I plan to take loads of post-bac courses and network with professors in programs I want. Hopefully it will work out.
That being said, I recently met with an Anthropologist who offered me some helpful, yet somewhat unsettling, words of advice. My main interest is environmental anthropology, and his advice was that I should consider not pursuing a PhD. Or if I do, I shouldn't do it until later. His advice was that, unless I was dead-set on academia, a PhD in a theoretical practice such as anthropology (physical and archeology not included) would put me at an extreme disadvantage. His advice, after listening to what I was interested in, was to get a dual masters instead, coupling environmental anthropology with GIS. Conveniently enough, while I don't have a lot of experience in it, GIS is another realm I have always been interested in.
While it is a very real possibility that I may only get admitted into an MA program to begin with, should I place more emphasis on a dual masters rather than using the program as a stepping stone into a PhD? Don't get me wrong, I would LOVE for the opportunity to actually become successful in academia, but that doesn't mean I wouldn't be interested in a job with a practical application of anthropology as well, whether it's helping out with environmental policy or with conservation efforts. Which would be more useful?
Thanks!