Hello! My name is Kyr Goyette, and I’m heading off to the Tarvagatai Valley in Mongolia this week to assist two Pitt PhD students with their archeological research and work on my own project establishing a reference set of medicinal plants to be used in further archeological analysis. Describing my summer plans to my friends and family has produced a fair amount of confusion–why, exactly, is a pre-medical student heading off to the other side of the world for a month to dig in the dirt? As an anthropology major, I’ve chosen to pursue an alternate pre-medical path–one that I believe will give me unique insight into the world of medicine and enable me to have a distinct skill set born from a more diverse undergraduate education.

I plan to continue on to medical school and eventual specialize in neurology, with a focus on epilepsy, psychosomatic illnesses, and diseases that blur the line between neurological and psychiatric. This kind of specialization often requires an intensely individual approach, as neurological illnesses can be idiosyncratic and highly variable in presentation. By studying humans and our culture, and particularly the ways that health and culture interact in the context of medicine, I hope to contribute significantly to the field of neurology and our understanding of how a few misfiring neurons can wreak so much havoc on an individual’s mental, emotional, and physical health.

I stumbled across this particular program largely on accident: last year, I took Introduction to Archeology and my graduate teaching assistant was Aspen Greaves. At the end of the spring semester of 2023, as I was telling her about my summer plans that included a three-week archeology course in Wyoming through the Frederick honors College, Aspen let me know that her and the other PhD student at Pitt who work in Mongolia take student volunteers. At that point in time, I knew basically nothing about Mongolia–and that’s a large part of the reason why I was almost immediately convinced that I had to go. When else in my life would I get the opportunity to camp for three weeks in a Mongolian valley and engage closely with the country’s culture? Moreover, Aspen and I began developing a project that would allow me to work in my medical interests–her research focuses on the agricultural practices of Mongolians during the era of the Mongolian Empire, and she suggested that I could work on developing a reference set of medicinally utilized plants for analysis of archeological remains.

I started applying for scholarships, and by March of 2024, I had purchased my plane tickets and started making plans to acquire the gear I would need to camp in an often rainy valley for three weeks in the summer. The idea of solo traveling across the world was daunting, but I was excited for what I knew would be waiting for me when I arrived: a completely new culture in which I could immerse myself, and a talented group of archeologists from which I could learn. I can’t wait to head out, and I’ll be back to update with what I find (internet access permitting)!