Once on the Metro Jim asked me what I was looking at. I sheepishly replied, "People."
I'm probably never going to be a research anthropologist. As much as I would love to, I'm never going to dive into a community, live as one of them, and do my damndest to understand the world as they do. There's not much money to be made that way, and I really can't stand the thought of being in academia forever.
But I'll always be a people-watcher. I'm up at the student center coffeehouse and there's so much going on around me - so many lives moving and shifting and changing. The sheer diversity - even within a relatively homogeneous population (mostly white college students in Ohio) is staggering. If I could, I'd sit down with each person here and ask them to tell me a story, to tell me about their lives, what they want and think and feel. I'd love that. And then I'd write a book about it.
As I always say, you're more interesting than you think you are.
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2 comments:
I do this too! My favorite place to people watch is the airport. It's like a human zoo. I can (and do) get to the airport way before I really need to just so I can kill time walking around and observing people.
I'm a total people watcher. This is my favorite activity on the Metro, the airport, or at the mall. I play this weird game where I observe people and then decide what kind of crime they would commit and what their motives would be.
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