Advice Needed

[FutureQuestion]

Hi everyone. Ever since I was a very young child, I have absolutely loved learning, reading and discovering the magic of this planet that we live on. In particular, I have always been extremely interested in human beings and how we became the intelligent, rational, civilized species that we are today. For most of my life I never even considered becoming a professor because I really just didn't know what the job entailed and, like a lot of people, when I was growing up I figured one had to be like Einstein or Hawking to become a professor haha:). However, after finishing my second year of university, I'm beginning to think that becoming an academic would be the ideal career for me. I essentially hate doing anything office related, the only "work" I really enjoy is school-related research and taking my courses. I really do not know where to begin though...and this is my problem. 

 

My grades after two years of undergraduate are alright (I think). My GPA is, I believe, about 3.75/4.0 and I have good relationships with professors. However, I really do not know what kind of professor I would most enjoy being, but because of my lifelong obsession with understanding human beings and our origins, i'm posting in this thread because perhaps many of you would have advice for me? My real questions are: Would pursuing and undergraduate and graduate degree in Anthropology be wise for someone with my interests? If so, what types of grades do I need? Is a B+ average sufficient, or must one do even better? What kind of research experience do I need? I hope these aren't silly questions, and I hope my aspirations aren't silly. Anyways, any insight would be awesome guys!!!

[RepatMan]

Couple things:

1. Being an academic is still very "office related." Academia is a huge bureaucracy and you'll need to attend meetings, suck up to bosses, and push papers. The plus side is that you can also pursue your own research when you have time outside the bureaucracy and teaching. Don't mean to discourage you, but just want you to have a realistic vision of what sort of life you might start orienting yourself towards.

2. It's very possible to get into grad programs with a B+ average, though it would be hard with anything much less than that. I graduated from my undergrad, a middling private institution, with a 3.3 gpa and above average GRE scores. I blindly applied to 7 programs and only got into 1 semi-funded MA program. Doing well at that program got me into a funded, good MA program somewhere else (and I got 1 funded PhD offer from an average program out of the 8 applied to that round). Then another round of applications I got into two funded programs, including a really good school. However, out of the 26 applications I sent out over 3.5 years of applying I only got into 3 PhD programs.

My advice is to get to know the potential supervisors, and maybe the grad chair, at any school you'd like to apply. DO NOT blindly apply to a school without talking to them and trying to make an impression. You also need to make sure they're even taking students to begin with.

To answer your question, yes it's very possible, but arduous and difficult. Try to find a professor to work with on their project in the summers, or find any sort of social science internship/research project/volunteering you can in order to develop your research skills and add to the resume. Also, tons of folks have come here asking very similar questions, so peruse the pages and use the search function (look up "research experience" and you'll likely find a few pages). Lots of wisdom in this crypt.