Author: Amanda

In the simplest of words, Anthropology is the systematic study of what makes humans human. Anthropology studies the origin, behavior, societies, cultures, linguistics, biology and everything else related to the human species. Anthropologists concern themselves with the mere concept of our reality so we as people can at least begin to grasp an understanding of this world we live in. They form and test hypotheses about our species so they can develop theories about us. There are four subfields to anthropology and they are Cultural anthropology, archaeology, linguistics, and Physical anthropology or Biological anthropology. Physical anthropology focuses on humans as biological organisms as well as human evolution and the genetic variation that makes us all different. Paleoanthropology, forensic anthropology, and primatology also fall under physical anthropology. Cultural anthropology is the study of the different variations of human thoughts, behaviors, and emotions.  Its two main components are ethnography and ethnology. Archaeology is the study of history, or the study of the dead, which includes dead societies, cultures, languages, and much more and Linguistics is the scientific study of language. Some subfields to linguistics are phonology (the study of language sounds), morphology (The study of pattern and Formation of language), syntax (Principles of sentence making), and grammar (The structure of language in it’s entirety). 

Bilal Rahmani’s intellectual home was his English class, his classmates, and his professor for that class. He stated that his “first month of college passed in this depressive state” because he didn’t care about the social aspect of things there. He went on to say he did’t join any clubs, make friends, go to pep rallies or anything else on that spectrum. All he did was go to school then go home to do his homework then repeat the cycle. The classes didn’t interest him nor did the professors engage him to be enthusiastic or even slightly interested in the classes he had, however, all of this changed during the second semester when he happened to have a certain English class. In this class, they were talking about a short story by Ernest Hemingway called ” Cat In The Rain”. He figured he’d have to answer all the questions the professor asked about the short story because none of his other classmates would understand the symbolism or complexity of the story. He raised his hand to answer a question, but so did a girl that was sitting next to him. The girl was picked and gave a whole different interpretation compared to the one that he already had in his mind. He still figured his interpretation was smarter, but then that’s when the rest of the class started “shooting out ideas that all made so much sense”. He went on to say “The classroom became ink, penetrating the water, which was my mind, adding new colors, creating something completely new, something I alone could never hope to create.”, which was his way of saying the class actually stimulated him intellectually. It created a spark in him he didn’t realize could exist. His intellectual home became that classroom and everyone in it.