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“The most astounding fact is the knowledge that the atoms that comprise life on earth, the atoms that make up the human body, are traceable to the crucibles that cooked light elements into heavy elements in their core, under extreme temperatures and pressures. These stars, the high mass ones among them, went unstable in their later years. They collapsed and then exploded, scattering their enriched guts across the galaxy. Guts made out of carbon, nitrogen, oxygen and all the fundamental ingredients of life itself…             So that when I look up at the night sky and I know that, yes, we are part of this universe, we are in this universe, but perhaps more important than both of those facts is that the universe is in us. When I reflect on that fact, I look up. Many people feel small because they’re small and the universe is big. But I feel big because my atoms came from those stars.” –Neil deGrasse Tyson    ...

A lot of the time, when people ask me what my degrees are in, they think I dig up artifacts. And so I explain that no, I am not an archaeologist. But let's face it; many people have no idea what a cultural anthropologist does. I do uncover artifacts but they're in stories- the relics of people's lives that I dig up with conversations to create a map of how they got to where they are, where they're going next, how they see themselves, their lives and how they connect to those around them. I think you could understand the whole world through stories; why people choose to do what they do pretty much tells us why the world is they way that it is, no?          Growing up I wanted nothing to do with people. I had a great deal of social anxiety. In high school I decided that I wanted to be a vet. I remember telling a friend that I wanted to work with animals and that people were not at all interesting. She protested, “but people are amazing Heather!” ...