Forensic Archaeology Assignment

Dear Dr Willis,

My name is Veera Sharma. I was born on January 20, 2007, and raised in Mumbai, India. Mumbai is one of the biggest and most beautiful coastal cities in India with a population of about 22.5 million people. As you may know, the main issue in India is overpopulation and unsurprisingly the environment is highly affected by it. It is a big reason why the coastal waters of Mumbai are generally different shades of brown. With a lot of gratitude I can say I’ve been blessed with lots of opportunities to travel the world my entire life because of my parents. Travelling to locations with beautiful oceans along with living in a non-landlocked city nurtured a special love in my heart for the ocean. As I grew up I began to appreciate it more since I started researching and learning more about the residents of the ocean.

One day in the 8th grade, in the thick of COVID-19, my friend and I got on a Zoom call and decided we should start looking at potential career prospects since life began getting serious, or so our younger selves thought. While scrolling on a website called ‘Interesting Career Options in 2019’, I came across Marine Biology, which immediately piqued my interest. That day, without much further research, I decided I would become a Marine Biologist. Surprisingly, I have stuck with that decision to this day. Eventually I did a lot of research and that got me hooked onto the fascinating idea of the underwater world. This then led to me asking my mother if we could get our diving certification. The same year, we completed both our Open Water and Advanced Open Water Scuba Diving certifications.

Diving opened a whole different world for me and unlocked a new side to my brain and my heart. The emotions I feel while diving are indescribable. It feels like the best ever drug on the planet or what i would imagine a monk on the mountains would be feeling. Even these words aren’t doing justice to those emotions. Eventually I ended up going to this small island called Malapascua in the Philippines to do a 6 week intense dive master course. That experience changed my life and I learned so much more than textbooks could and ever have taught me. Now, I’m in my second trimester at JCU pursuing what my 8th grade self dreamt of.

I chose Forensic Archaeology as an elective as my life has been so marine centric for many years now and I saw this subject as an option for an elective. I read up on it and I was instantly intrigued by the contents of the subject. I never imagined myself studying anything close to this but I’m grateful for this opportunity to explore a different field of study and open my horizons beyond what I already planned for.