So I’m currently a sophomore at uni, desperately in need of deciding my major and getting my schedule for the next 2+ years on track. At the moment, I’m tossed between two majors:
[ul]A Liberal Studies major, emphasis in Social Relations/Sociology, with a Writing minor. I would love all the classes I would take and develop a lot of critical thinking skills. The Writing minor would be a bit useful, but the Lib. Studies major would also look completely useless to a good portion of employers (though there are some who highly recommend Lib. Studies, just not many).[/ul][ul]A Professional Writing major, with Public Relations emphasis. I wouldn’t mind most of the classes, but I wouldn’t have nearly as much room to study the topics that really interest me. However, it would be a hell of a lot more useful in most professional environments, and look a lot more practical on resumes, too.[/ul]
When focusing on the major solely as a career booster, the more useful choice is pretty obvious. However, the classes I feel have helped me most in my life, so far, are the ones like Ethics and Logic and Sociology, which have developed my critical thinking skills and understanding of the world. I don’t think I would like the person I’d be if I hadn’t taken them. But then, I’ve never been in the professional world, I can’t vouch for anything there.
So my questions for you are:
What kind of major did you get? Professionally based or personal interest? Mix of both?
How much has that choice helped you? In both professional and personal environments?
English. It was definitely not a professional choice, and only a personal choice in the sense that I had so many English credits by senior year that I changed to an English major in order to graduate on time (I had gone through psychology and political science majors along the way, and finished half the requirements for a journalism major. Oh, and started out pre-med. English is one of the last majors I would have anticipated getting my freshman and sophomore years.)
My choice didn’t make any difference to me. One liberal arts major would have been good as any other. It helped me with my critical thinking/reading/writing skills.
Nope. I never looked at my undergrad college experience as direct preparation for a job. It does so happen that my college experience was directly related to my chosen profession–photojournalism/photography–but that’s because of my involvement with the school newspaper. I pretty much do believe in the liberal arts philosophy and I do feel it was absolutely worth it. YMMV. It’s really up to you to figure out what you want out of college. There’s certainly a lot of people who do treat it more as job training and go into more practical majors. I think it depends very much on your personality and your philosophy on what college is for.
Depends on how well you want to eat when you are done.
I’ve got one niece who graduated in fine arts, and is a tad troubled now that she is having a hard time finding any job other than retail sales.
Her brother just graduated with an accounting degree, and had a number of offers.
IMO, you can pick up most of the social sciences on your own through reading, community college, volunteering, and the like. Same can’t be said as easily for a marketable degree.
We told our kids that we weren’t in a position that we would guarantee to help them significantly after 4 years of college, so we recommended that they style their studies in a manner that allowed them to be financially self-sufficient at that point. If they want to spend 4 years “finding themselves” - well, I hope they like Ramen.
I majored in Journalism at Kent State. It was a mix of both - my love of writing mixed with the practical, obvious career.
2 & 3. I did not go on to be a journalist, although I got my BS. I think the journalism program was awesome because at Kent they made it mandatory for journalism students to take a diverse course of classes. I took stuff like African American Studies and Macro Economics and The History of the English Language.
Even though I do Web development now, the writing aspect did help me (I have my own business and thus have to write my own business documents, plus help clients with text on their sites) as did the layout and sales aspects.
The “liberal arts” part of the coursework definitely was interesting and helped me be a more well-rounded individual.
I do not regret my decision at all - but that might be specific to my major and the fine course outline for KSU journalism majors.
PolSci, International relations. At the time, I thought nuclear deterrence, SALT treaties and such were tremendously sexy. And there was NO WAY, such knowledge concerning our cold war enemy could ever be irrelevant…
Of course, I had always planned on going into law school. But it would have been nice to have something moderately useful under my belt, to distinguish me from all the other LAS wannabe lawyers.
Not at all. All that mattered was my grad (law) degree.
I wish I had studied science. At the time, I avoided math and science, because they required effort. And BSing LAS courses was so damned easy. Now I think picking up science on my own is more difficult than it would have been to independently learn history, literature, sociology, etc…
Social Sciences (Anthropology focus, with minors in European History and Sociology) It was a choice of necessity. I returned to school 8 years after dropping out as a Junior, and asked my counsellor “What am I closest to?”
The choice was perfect, since I went back to school to get my Teaching Credentials. I love teaching History and Government, and the cultural analysis classes help quite a bit.
Started in Animal and Veterinary Science with the intention of going to Veterinary school, but I got lazy and changed it to Agriculture with an emphasis in poultry research.
Not much. I worked for the University immediately after graduation, but once that job was eliminated, I wasn’t able to find a position in my field. Having a college degree has definitely helped me get jobs in other areas, but the major itself turned out pretty useless to me. There isn’t a lot of poultry research going on around this town, go figure.
Yes, somewhat. I should have pushed myself and gotten through physics and organic chemistry. Although things have turned out pretty well for me (I’m in IT now), it would have been a lot different if I had gotten the A&VS degree.
What kind of major did you get? Professionally based or personal interest? Mix of both?
I majored in accounting. I knew that I was a numbers person and wanted to go down that kind of path. I specifically chose accounting because I knew it would make me employable. At the time I knew I had to be able to get a job after finishing my bachelor’s degree - I got a lot of financial aid and had parents help, but knew that I’d be on my own if I wanted a masters degree.
How much has that choice helped you? In both professional and personal environments?
I feel that professionally I’ve done very well for myself. I earn a very decent salary and really don’t want for anything. While I don’t LOVE my job, I enjoy what I do for the most part.
Do you regret your decision or not? Why?
Every once in awhile I think that maybe I should have found something I was passionate about. I have friends who did that. But I suspect that what I am passionate about doesn’t pay well. I’ve seen too many people gripe about money and not being able to find a decent job, that I only regret it temporarily. To me (and this is obviously IMHO) financial security is a very important thing. I would rather have a job that is “eh, okay” and be able to fund my hobbies and extracurriculars than to scrimp and pinch and have trouble finding a job that is “OMG LOVE.” YMMV.
Yeah, Dinsdale is kind of on the same wavelength as I am.
I did undergrad in Computer Science and graduate in Computer Engineering, and both were because I knew that I could have a career when I finished, and I knew I enjoyed working in computers.
I am working an extremely well-paying job now, and definitely have a lot of potential places to work based on my location. So I’d say it was a great thing for me professionally, I skipped over the whole “work my way up the chain from a crap job” thing after college.
I don’t regret my decision, but I do wonder about what I want to do long term, simply because I don’t absolutely love programming. Looking back, I’d kinda wished I could have branched out a bit more and done some study of biology/chemistry or more humanities subjects like linguistics. But overall, I’m very happy with my choice. As cynical as it seems, I definitely think a degree should prepare you for a career in a field you enjoy, otherwise you’re spending an extremely large amount of time and money on something that boils down to personal enrichment.
I was recently reading a novel by Penn Jillette (Sock - I don’t recommend it) that had a reference to social sciences that I found amusing. Essentially, that any curriculum that is insecure enough to feel the need to include the word “science” in its name - isn’t.
Economics, more personal interest than professional, but…
It simply didn’t matter what I took. What mattered was getting a degree. Finishing school taught me about studying, icnreased my overall set of knowledge about the way the world works, and made me appreciate academics. And many jobs, including the one I hold, simply want to know that you have the brains and discipline to get a degree and are not that picky about what kind of degree it is. In theory, some degrees might have helped more, like environmental science, but that would have been way outside of my skill set. Except for specific applications (you aren’t going to become a civil engineer with a BA in fine arts), GETTING A DEGREE is what counts.
Oh, and BTW: unless you’re going to grad school, or have a really picky first employer, the time will very rapidly come when not one person on God’s green earth will give a crap what your grades were as long as you passed. I have had many people be impressed, or at least give me job interviews, by my having a BA from a good school. I have never, not once, ever had a person say “So what was your GPA?”
Pretty much. I think of an undergrad degree these days as what a high school degree was a generation or two ago. Yeah, and nobody gives a damn about the GPA, unless you’re going into grad school or something like that.
What kind of major did you get? Professionally based or personal interest? Mix of both?
I have a BS in chemistry and am (slowly, very slowly) working on an MS in the same. What I really wanted to do was play piano for a living. Only there’s not much money in that, and I’m not really that good. Oh, I was good compared to the other kids in my high school class, but the competition is a little more fierce outside those 128 kids. I would have loved to play either flute or mallet percussion in a symphony orchestra, too. Again, the real world is quite a smackdown there. So chemistry it was.
How much has that choice helped you? In both professional and personal environments?
I work a steady daylight job with good pay and good benefits that enables me to have a satisfying work-life balance while doing something that I have an interest in. I wouldn’t say I’m passionate about my work, only that I enjoy doing it. This would not have been possible without the degree.
Do you regret your decision or not? Why?
No. I have friends that majored in music. One of them is waitressing in a coffee shop 8yrs out of school and performs in community theater when she can. The other went on to get her PhD in english and is working in a writing center. I value my boringly stable life too much to regret my career choice. I viewed education as a means to an end and chose an education that would make me marketable while doing something that doesn’t suck. And I still play piano.
Environmental Engineering. About halfway through high school, I realized that I was probably going to become an engineer. Originally, I had wanted to go into Chemical (and was accepted) but ended up going to another school that didn’t have it. So I settled on Environmental (one of the reasons was that we weren’t required to take a second course in C programming. I’m serious, I suck at programming and barely passed the intro course.)
It’s worked out great. I found a job within 6 months of graduating, it pays well and it’s a 10 minute commute to my house. I don’t even have to get on the highway, a huge bonus in this city. I could even take the bus but the large amount of field work that I do limits the chance to leave the car at home.
I regret the fact that I wasn’t able to go into Chemical at my original school but Environmental has been a great choice. I found 3rd and 4th year very interesting and am now working at a consulting firm building off what I learned. Most of my friends who graduated with degrees in Electrical Engineering hate their jobs because they aren’t relevant to their degrees. I consider myself lucky in that regard. I still miss Chemistry and wished I could’ve learned more.
English degree. I liked English. No, I didn’t go into teaching.
I had a helluva time finding a job. I still haven’t found anything solid and I’ve been slowly bouncing around, trying to find something to settle into. I think I’ve found something that’s interesting, but passing the entrance exam for it was a bitch. I’m in a paid internship right now, but I was here last year and they didn’t keep me then, so I have to plan for them not keeping me again this year.
Do I regret it? Yes and no. I got to read some interesting things and expose myself to other viewpoints and learn. I do now realize that I’m about as marketable as AIDS. Another degree or something more technical might be the trick, but it’s mildly depressing having the job market either 1) virtually nonexistent 2) tell you at large that you’re pretty much useless.
You should major in what you love and enjoy your time being a student. While there are some career tracks where they really want & need you to have majored in something relevant (ie.g., medical school would probably not expect applications from folks with a BA in art and architecture), most of the mainstream business employment opportunities are such that they care less what you learned in school than that you are together enough to embark on a 4-year task (getting a college degree), attend scheduled events (classes), do what is asked of you without constant supervision (turn in papers on time etc), and have enough fundamental intelligence to negotiate the intellectual challenges, whatever they may have been. 1. What kind of major did you get? Professionally based or personal interest? Mix of both?
Women’s Studies / American Studies (BA). Personal interest.
2. How much has that choice helped you? In both professional and personal environments?
I would not have missed it for the world. One of the happiest times of my life.
3. Do you regret your decision or not? Why?
Not for an instant. And I’m gainfully employed as a database developer and it pays well and no one cares that I did not major in oh I dunno Information Technology or something.
You’d be surprised. When I was pre-med in '93-'94, the major with the highest acceptance rate into medical schools was music. However, remember with med school you still need to take all the pre-reqs: chem, orgo, bio, physics, calculus, english, IIRC. So somebody who managed a music major and the med school pre-reqs is probably a pretty dedicated student.
