<p>@needhelp203 </p>
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<p>Both, plus what @snarlatron already said. Basically, humanities PhD students are cheap labor and prestige generators. Universities with doctoral programs are more prestigious (for whatever reason), and PhD students teach the lower-level undergrad classes that tenured professors don’t want to or don’t have time to teach - or, the classes that there aren’t enough of them to teach. So there are too many PhD students, especially in the humanities fields (science PhD students are less likely to sole-teach classes, although they do teach labs and serve as TAs). Mythology, specifically Greek and Roman mythology, is likely to be very popular. Most departments probably already have someone who can teach that; the field is well-researched, and finding a new niche is going to be difficult; so you will be competing for very few slots with a lot of other people.</p>
<p>If you are simply interested in mythology, you can read and learn about it and even take classes and do some amateur scholarship without becoming an anthropologist. You can get a job and live near a university; go to lectures and visit their library, audit classes, etc. You can read books about it.</p>
<p>If you really want to do scholarship on mythology - as in, you want to generate new knowledge about Greek and Roman (or other) mythologies by reading through dusty tomes in ancient forgotten languages in the basement of an archive, translating and analyzing that material, and competing to publish it in books, monographs, and articles - and your desire to do this is GREATER than your desire to do pretty much anything else in the world - well, then that’s when you need a PhD. Anything less than that, you can just be a really interested enthusiast, which is totally fine!</p>
<p>One way of increasing your chances is finding a niche that few people occupy. There are tons of people who do Roman and Greek mythology, or European mythologies in general (Norse, Celtic, etc.). That’s why we know so much about them - many scholars can read Latin and Greek, many digs have taken place there, many people have analyzed this stuff, etc. Fewer people do research on South Pacific mythologies or West African mythologies or Central Asian mythologies or Central American mythologies. You see? You go in as a Greek/Roman scholar, you compete with a bazillion other people. You go in as a scholar of West African traditional mythologies who reads Bambara and Twi, and suddenly you are competing with a LOT fewer people. You also open yourself up to more jobs, because now you can teach in an African studies department too, or a cultural and ethnic studies department.</p>
<p>I’m not saying that you should study something you’re meh about because 8 years of your life isn’t worth that, but it seems like you’re sort of broadly interested in myth so if the geographic region doesn’t mean a whole lot to you, then consider one that’s less-studied. Remember that the point of PhD work is to generate new knowledge, not to just learn about the old knowledge that already exists.</p>
<p>BUT</p>
<p>I wanted to see about going to grad school but with my anthropology undergrad degree I don’t know what to study.</p>
<p>From this I’m concluding that you probably don’t need grad school. If you don’t know what to study, then grad school is more or less pointless. The way it works is that you select a career first, and then the degree you need to get to that career. So if you wanted a career teaching and conducting research in anthropology, then you would need a PhD - but you don’t get a PhD (or an MA) and then say “Hmm, what do I want to do now?” Because then you might decide that what you really want to do is be a lawyer, and you just wasted 2-8 years and $$$ on something you don’t need.</p>