BioAnthro Journey Through the Guest Lectures

Custodio, Aiseel Mae D.

To easily understand the concept of my poem, I used the concept of hiking in order to reach the top of the mountain. The term mountain of dreams symbolizes our ultimate goal―thus, I used hiking as a metaphor for our different journeys in life, and BioAnthro, through the guest lecturer, was the journey I was describing in the poem.

After describing the mountain of dreams, I described in there how our expectations in our life or career journey were totally different from reality, and sometimes we ended up entering a path that we did not plan, for example, me, entering Anthropology. Thus, I narrated there how I was overwhelmed and was planning to shift courses, then a “ray of sunshine” (symbolism for warmth aura and friendly personality) which is a personification to Prof. Kevin, who pointed to the ‘trail markers’ (the guest lectures) and helped me in this class.

Moving on to the trail markers ― I used skulls and crossbones for Dr. Bishop because she was the one who told us to prepare about handling the remains. Aside from that, the parallel of the two shepherds' lives was taken from the conclusion of her research study, because the development strategies of the shepherd from the Hellenistic period are similar to the shepherd from Modern Greece. Aside from that, I described ethical situations in Anthropology using the ‘lines’― diagonal lines because Bishop in chess moves diagonally and coincidentally also symbolizes forbidden line which I relate to the concept of not stepping on the boundaries of the community or remains, and the clouded lines which symbolize situations wherein we should decide to base on answering questions relating to respect (I used the word ‘slight’). For the second marker, I used rocks because Peña in Spanish means rock thus I used it to relate to her. Then I described the path having earth’s aroma because she talked about plants in her discussion and in her study. I described there how from teeth and bones, we could get information about the diet of the past (use of ‘history of treats’). Lastly, I used ‘orange strap’ on the last marker because hunters usually used orange (or glow in the dark colors) tapes on the trees and vests. In there, I used the introduction of different people as having the same names, “Hunter” because Dr. van der Haas discussed that hunter-gatherers are caged in a single term even though they have different traits; and ended up asking myself what would be a good term to replace the term hunter. Then I ended the poem by implying about how I choose to continue this path (Anthro).