What Are You Doing Here? Making the Academy-to-Business Transition as a Practicing Anthropologist

Practicing anthropology is a lot like living life—we get better at it the longer we do it, learning from our mistakes and our successes, and refining our techniques, strategies, and perspectives. Likewise, we do a lot of "making it up as we go along." With a bit of preparation and a lot of improvisation, we get ideas from the people around us, test the validity of our assumptions, and revise our approaches based on firsthand experience. The academy-to-workplace transition can be an especially challenging part of the journey for any new professional anthropologist. Making one's way from the comfort of the university to a new and unfamiliar environment often means simply jumping right in and using whatever knowledge and skill one may have to find a niche and establish a rhythm. Preparation may perhaps be even more tenuous for those going to work in business, since private sector work is not typically a focus of practitioner training programs. No matter how much we prepare for our careers, the best way to actually learn what being a practicing anthropologist is all about is to go out there and do it.