How did you decide to pursue a degree in SA? What interested you most about it?
My decision to pursue a degree in SA began after I got laid off from my position as a legal assistant in a personal injury law firm in April 2020. I remembered taking a few SA courses while I was majoring in Criminology and while I enjoyed those classes, I didn't pursue SA further. Given that there was nobody hiring at that time, I decided to take a few SA courses to fill my time. After the SA advisors advised me that a second BA only required the completion of 60 credits, I decided to declare my SA major and PSYC minor and get the second Bachelor's degree.

What was your favourite SA course? Why?
My favourite SA course was SA 359: Special Topics in Anthropology taken in the Fall 2020 term. This course's specific topic was on mental health, culture, and therapeutic governance. I found this class most interesting because I learned that there are many factors that can impact how mental health and illnesses are viewed, labelled and treated. It was most interesting to compare and contrast how cultures along with individual characteristics such as gender, class, and race played a significant role in the labelling, treatment and experience of mental distress and health compared to how Western culture labelled and dictated the experience and treatment of mental distress and illnesses.

What’s something you’re proud of accomplishing during your time at SFU?
As a student who has previously struggled to understand and apply academic readings and write essays, I am proud of the fact that I eventually learned how to pick out the point of dry academic readings and apply it to my essays. This is a hard skill and not everyone who enters undergrad knows how to do it right away. It is important to understand your sources before you apply them in your papers or use them to demonstrate a point and the better I understood the sources I wanted to cite, I found I wrote better papers and it showed in the final grade on the paper.

What are your plans post graduation?
Right now, I am working as a corporate records clerk in a downtown law firm that specializes in mergers and acquisitions, private equity, and commercial law as I think about what my next steps might be.

What advice would you give to current or future students?
My biggest piece of advice to both current and future students is to try to have an idea of where you want your degree to take you when you get to the later years of undergrad but keep an open mind at the same time. Striking a balance between having an open, curious mind and focusing on achieving your end goals is tricky. If you focus too much on the end game, then you miss out on learning about potentially interesting subjects beyond your main focus. On the flipside, if you don't manage to nail down where you want your education to take you, then it can be more challenging to determine what you want to do after undergrad.

While it is intimidating to approach and network with professors and fellow classmates, it is important to do so because you never know when those connections can help you later on in life!