Who am I? Hello, my name is Richelle Valkema but I much rather prefer to be referred to as Rikki. I am twenty two years old and super excited for my upcoming graduation in December. I just finished up my fourth year at MSU as an undergraduate anthropology student focused in the socio-cultural subdivision specializing in Asian Studies. My main area of interest is South Korea, especially the modern media culture and its relation to a possible increase in the South Korean crime rate.
Hobbies: reading, writing, singing, sketching, KOREAN! I am currently studying Korean as well as Mandarin Chinese and I know a little Spanish as well as my native language, English. Learning languages is actually a hobby of one of my younger sisters and mine. Studying other cultures and practicing other languages have always been things that I enjoy so when I learned what anthropology was and that I could major in it, I quickly chose to major in it right away!
Where am I from? I am a native Michigander born and raised in Kalamazoo. I come from a relatively large family but I am the first child to go to college.
Why the CHI Fieldschool? I chose to apply for this program/fieldschool because it specializes in the digital aspect of cultural heritage and I am sadly not very capable with technology. I do not have my own webpage and my younger sister has always set up my accounts such as twitter and youtube. I really wanted to understand technology better, and I really wanted to find out how this relates to cultural heritage. Technology is becoming too important in the field of anthropology and I figured that I really couldn’t keep waiting to learn about it if I wanted to be capable and competitive in my career/search for a career.
Technology and the understanding of how it works is especially important considering how many of the sources for my area of interest are in a digital format and involve using technology that I am not currently familiar with.
So far from what I have seen this last week, I can’t wait to really dig into our project designing and creation. There are so many people here that know where their interests and passions lay and I love how refreshing it is to be surrounded by passionate intellectuals!
It’s nice to meet you all!