Anthropology is one of the human sciences, a central part of the liberal arts. A liberal arts education trains a student to (1) read, (2) write, (3) research and (4) report back on what they have found. That may not seem like much, but those skills remain crucial to obtaining a white collar job.

Additionally, an anthropological education informs students about the peoples of the globe, their hopes fears and resentments, the ways they organize their lives and the processes-both big and small-which are bringing those lives increasing together. This makes anthropology a way of entering into discussions of enduring questions, questions which like other peoples are not going away anytime soon. How can we live together? How different can people be from one another and still be people for one another? How can they do what they do, and how can we do what we do?

Precisely because other people-individually and collectively-do not live their lives in the same ways that we do, this sort of education contributes to another useful skill: the ability to think outside one's own box.

Thus anthropology can be both useful and interesting at the same time and in the same way.