Hello. My name is Ben and I’m a senior anthropology major. This will be my third year at MSU and part of the reason I originally signed up for this class was to be able to graduate in December. I decided not to do that (I don’t really know why I was considering it in the first place), but decided to keep the class because it sounded interesting. I’m excited about learning more about archeology. Next year I’m taking a mix of anthropology classes with a couple of language classes thrown in for fun, but I’ve changed my schedule more times than I can count and probably will again. I enjoy learning about everything which is probably part of the problem. I don’t really know what I want to do with my life after I graduate, which is part of the reason I’m not ready to graduate, but I also want to do something other than just sitting in classes listening to lecture after lecture. I love anthropology, but I don’t really know what I’ll do with it. I’m hoping to join the Peace Corps after graduation, but I still have to go through the whole registration process, I’m planning on getting started on in within the next couple of weeks though (fingers crossed). After that, well I guess its up in the air. Maybe back to grad school or random jobs, I just want to be able to travel and see the world as well as keep going to school wherever I’m at, so whatever works for that.

For the first half of the summer I participated in the MSU Field School at Morton Village, run by Dr. O’Gorman. I’m not really sure that I want to go into archeology, but actually being able to get out of a classroom and participate in something (to get my hands dirty so to speak) was completely awesome. For the rest of the summer, I’m just planning on taking this class and relaxing a little. I’m hoping to do a little more archaeology volunteering later this summer and next summer as well. I also volunteer at the VA on an irregular basis, basically whenever my mother guilts me into it, which has happened every summer for the past 6? years. Otherwise I’m planning on just enjoying the weather and being outside as much as possible, fishing, boating, golfing, disc golfing!, biking, swimming, all those fun summer activities. I love reading and generally read at least a book a week and I’m also a fan of computer games (especially rts, tbs and rpg), luckily those can be enjoyed outside as well, albeit in the shade.

I’m looking forward to this class and learning more about Egyptian archaeology. I haven’t taken an entirely online course at MSU yet so I don’t have much to compare to, but so far I like the course layout much better than using Angel, especially the open nature of the course.