The enthusiasm with which the American Anthropological Association touts the value of anthropology is unfortunate. I got my B.A. in anthropology in 2008, have worked non-profit community jobs ever since, and am now pursuing K-12 teaching. What drove me to the field of cultural anthropology was its down-to-earth focus on everyday life and the life of a community, and I don’t think I’m alone (see, for example, “The Scientific Curmudgeon”). More specifically, I wanted to get actively involved and hoped that applied anthropology was the key. Now I realize that anthropology, in its current form, is not the answer, for a variety of reasons.
Anthropology, via the AAA, markets itself as one of the few fields that gives you critical “global information and thinking skills” (link), but lots of fields have the same or better global (and domestic) applicability, from engineering to healthcare, education, journalism, etc. By comparison, cultural anthropology, in its general form, offers few skills aside from "participant observation" and "ethnography,” and those are extremely limited in value.