Hard sciences or lib arts academia?

[Little_Plastic_Ninja]

It looks like a ridiculous question, prima facie, but give me a minute to explain.

I’m going back to school – part time-ish this semester (nine hours, possibly ten – more on that later), possibly fully full time next semester, possibly to graduate school next fall. My current plan is to raise my GPA with a few upper-division English classes so that I can be reconsidered for graduate school at TSU next year. Hopefully I’ll also get the tutoring job I’m auditioning for tomorrow so I can get some teaching experience (and flexible-ish part time work to help pay the bills).

Currently, my plan is to go for a master’s and a doctorate in English with a focus on teaching Shakespeare through performance. I’d use that to… well, teach Shakespeare through performance. I think I’d love it. I think I’d have fun.

I fear that in this economy I’d have about a snowball’s chance in hell of making it work, no matter how well I do. Admittedly, that economy will undoubtedly change in the next six or eight years, but whether it’ll be for the better or worse is unseeable. It probably won’t be in the direction that says “Suddenly Shakespeare teachers are in incredible demand!”

For years, though, I’ve considered going back to school for a harder science. I was always pretty good at math, but I made some serious mistakes that resulted in failing Calculus the first time I took it. I’ve been a bit shy of it ever since. As much as I enjoyed being able to talk someone around to my side in English, I missed the concrete right-answer-and-here-is-how-you-get-there of mathematics.

Recently, an old friend made an impassioned plea: “Please, LPN, go into a hard science. Hard sciences need women. Your degree would be marketable. You could do some really amazing stuff.” I challenged him to find me a hard science I’d love that much, and – long story short – I’m seriously considering shifting my focus to architectural engineering with an eye toward the restoration and reconstruction of old cities and buildings.

To do this, though, I’d need to do a complete 180. I’d be burying myself in math and chemistry and physics and engineering. I’d have to start from scratch and get a new bachelor’s before I could approach a master’s. It’s not that I can’t, it’s just that I’m turning 31 this year and I’ll probably be at least 40 before I can reenter the world.

I’m approaching things slowly: I’m relearning precalculus with the help of a teacher friend. I’m planning to request to audit the introductory architectural engineering course this semester.

Dopers, what do you think? What’s your input? Engineers, how have you enjoyed your work? What do you have to put up with that I’ve avoided until now?

[Inigo_Montoya]

I’d use that to… well, teach Shakespeare through performance. I think I’d love it. I think I’d have fun.

Ok. Is there any occupation you can say this about WRT, say, engineering?

ETA: My thoughts are: you don’t get a LA degree for the money, and you don’t get a science degree for the fun. Unless it’s a geology degree.

[Little_Plastic_Ninja]

It’s hard to say: I’ve never tried being an engineer before. I’m game to give it a go, though.

And I’m not exactly desperate to live high on the hog, as it were. If I can afford a nice apartment and a decent car, I’m living just fine. I do have a tiny worry that I will hate, hate, hate teaching freshmen and I know that’s where I’ll start as a professor. Everyone does.

[Superhal]

You might want to try a thread search for this topic (I believe the last one was about humanities degrees or something.) There’s a link to some good articles about the value of humanities PhD’s. In a nutshell: people get them because they’re easy and professors tell students they can get jobs when there aren’t enough jobs. This tends to attract a particular kind of student who is not confident about themselves and prefer to stay in the comfort of college as long as possible.

Regarding teaching, it’s a thankless job with low pay. I would recommend statistics. The math is not hard.

[Inigo_Montoya]

Can you job shadow an engineer in your field of choice or are internships available that can give you some exposure?

I’d think teaching freshmen would be cool once you get past the tedium.

[Beware_of_Doug]

There’s a double jeopardy in a liberal arts degree lately. It not only doesn’t bring the promise of standardized skills, it’s becoming a bit of a personal statement as far as the hiring staff over at Human Robots are concerned. In their stunted, eyes-front, snap-judgment view, it says: “I lack ambition and am neither practical nor humble enough to do what the economy demands. I care more about people, feelings, and ideas than doing, producing and delivering. I am a woo-woo moonbat, whom all you spreadsheet-monkeys owe a decent living, because I don’t live to work.”

At that point, who’s going to care what skills you have?

[Little_Plastic_Ninja]

So what you’re saying is: not only am I more likely to get a job in my field that pays well if I have a BS in something clever-sounding, I am also more likely to get any other job I apply for?

Won’t they be surprised when they learn I have hobbies.

And Superhal, I’m not so much in for something easy. Programming is easy, but it’s also a little tedious.

[Sattua]

A woman with a degree in neuroscience and a degree in linguistics talking: for pure marketability, degrees in most liberal arts and in most hard sciences are roughly equivalent. Meaning, you’d do a lot better to get a degree in something that leads directly to a specific job, such as accounting, nursing, or ESL.

Both arts and sciences are vanity education, imho.

Do NOT get “a degree in programming”. Any monkey can program.

[Animastryfe]

@Sattua

A woman with a degree in neuroscience and a degree in linguistics talking: for pure marketability, degrees in most liberal arts and in most hard sciences are roughly equivalent. Meaning, you’d do a lot better to get a degree in something that leads directly to a specific job, such as accounting, nursing, or ESL.

Both arts and sciences are vanity education, imho.

Do NOT get “a degree in programming”. Any monkey can program.

A CS degree is not a degree in programming; a CS professor can be an awful programmer in the same way that a literature critic could be an awful fiction writer.

There are many comparisons of salaries by bachelor degrees, such as this one. I think every one that I’ve seen has the hard sciences (including math) and engineering making up most of the top ten.

[MichaelEmouse]

@Sattua

A woman with a degree in neuroscience and a degree in linguistics talking: for pure marketability, degrees in most liberal arts and in most hard sciences are roughly equivalent. Meaning, you’d do a lot better to get a degree in something that leads directly to a specific job, such as accounting, nursing, or ESL.

Both arts and sciences are vanity education, imho.

Do NOT get “a degree in programming”. Any monkey can program.

Really, chemistry is as bad as, say philosophy or anthropology?

LPN:
“I’d have to start from scratch and get a new bachelor’s before I could approach a master’s.”
Why do you want a master’s and not stop at a BS?

To follow on Sattua’s comment, why a non-applied graduate degree (or even undergraduate degree)? An associate’s degree tailored to an in-demand, difficult to offshore job might be best. If you have a passion for theater, you can volunteer. If you want to teach Shakespeare through performance, you can do that without spending 4-5 years getting a phd, unless the theater industry is much less sensible than I think.

[Animastryfe]

Little Plastic Ninja, why would you need a PhD to perform or teach Shakespeare?

[Oakminster]

If you get a graduate degree in pretty much any part of the English department, you probably aren’t going to be teaching Shakespeare by performance while you’re awake. If you get a job at all, you’re really looking at teaching English 101 or High School…assuming you like having a steady paycheck. Being a English teacher sucks. Even at the college level, junior professors get the bulk of the crap work. 101 or 95, possibly both, multiple sections. Tons of papers to grade. Low pay. Punk kids rolling their eyes as you wax eloquent on the joys of iambic pentameter. Maybe one course a semester in something other than freshman comp, if you’re lucky and don’t piss off the department head.

[congodwarf]

So, you’re 40 years old and have finished your schooling.

You are searching the want ads and you see no jobs for teaching Shakespere (whether through performance or not) OR Architectural Engineering focusing on reconstruction.

What would be your next choice? Does the idea of any old boring engineering or teaching job horrify you? What other jobs could you get with your shiny new degree?

Once you figure that out, you should have a clearer idea of which would be a better major for you.
In my case:

My ultimate goal (which will also put me at 38-40 years old) is to be a Pathologist. I have wanted to do this since I was a young child (almost 20 years now) so it’s unlikely that I am going to change my mind in the next 8-10 years. However, if I can’t do that, I am also perfectly content with the idea of being an underling in a lab or going to pharmaceutical school instead. Needless to say, I am NOT focusing on the humanities. I am starting out with Liberal Arts but that’s only because the community college doesn’t have a science major and the degree requirements pretty much satisfy the BS core requirements.

Anyway, my point is that all of the jobs I would like to be doing 8 years from now, all involve starting with a degree in hard sciences (yes I know I can go to medical school with a degree in English - I choose not to because of the possibility of NOT going to medical school). How many of the jobs you can picture yourself doing when you’re 40 involve a degree in English? Engineering?

[Superhal]

Note on ESL: The pay isn’t great and jobs are scarce in English speaking countries like the US. If you plan on working overseas, an MA in ESL has the benefits/pay of a PhD.

When I said “easy,” I meant the math is easier. You don’t have to go up to calculus and beyond as in engineering or sciences.

[ultrafilter]

@Superhal

Regarding teaching, it’s a thankless job with low pay. I would recommend statistics. The math is not hard.

@Superhal

When I said “easy,” I meant the math is easier. You don’t have to go up to calculus and beyond as in engineering or sciences.

Have you ever actually looked in a non-introductory statistics textbook?

[Superhal]

@ultrafilter

Have you ever actually looked in a non-introductory statistics textbook?

Yep. I’ve taken 400-600 stats classes and designed spreadsheets for several different jobs. Probably the hardest thing I’ve done is standard deviation, and that was like once, ever. In fact, most of what I do I would classify as accounting, not stats.

Imho, the only thing “hard” about stats is the number of items you are working with (e.g. standard deviation of test scores for 100 takers, item analysis for 50 item tests, etc.) The highest math I’ve ever studied was trig, and no stats book has gone that far. I would say maybe Alg I was the hardest math I needed to understand stats.

[ReticulatingSplines]

@Superhal

@ultrafilter

Have you ever actually looked in a non-introductory statistics textbook?

Yep. I’ve taken 400-600 stats classes and designed spreadsheets for several different jobs. Probably the hardest thing I’ve done is standard deviation, and that was like once, ever. In fact, most of what I do I would classify as accounting, not stats.

Imho, the only thing “hard” about stats is the number of items you are working with (e.g. standard deviation of test scores for 100 takers, item analysis for 50 item tests, etc.) The highest math I’ve ever studied was trig, and no stats book has gone that far. I would say maybe Alg I was the hardest math I needed to understand stats.

This is a joke, right? You need a pretty solid math background (and far past algebra) to do advanced statistics like multidimensional scaling.

[Spectre_of_Pithecanthropus]

@Sattua

A woman with a degree in neuroscience and a degree in linguistics talking: for pure marketability, degrees in most liberal arts and in most hard sciences are roughly equivalent. Meaning, you’d do a lot better to get a degree in something that leads directly to a specific job, such as accounting, nursing, or ESL.

Both arts and sciences are vanity education, imho.

Do NOT get “a degree in programming”. Any monkey can program.

In fact, I don’t think there’s any such thing as a “degree in programming”, at least not the kind of degree that would be generally acknowledged as a prerequisite for something else, like grad school. If you do see a programming degree offered, it’s probably something on the order of DeVry or ITT; nobody else will recognize it and you can’t use it as a stepping stone for a master’s degree.

I disagree that any monkey can program, but it is true that programming is just a tool to help you do certain things. If you can program well you can do those things more easily; if not, you’ll need to compensate for the deficiency somehow, assuming that you have to get those things done. You’d do more programming if you major in CS than, say German literature, but it’s not the primary content of the degree.

[ultrafilter]

@Superhal

Yep. I’ve taken 400-600 stats classes and designed spreadsheets for several different jobs. Probably the hardest thing I’ve done is standard deviation, and that was like once, ever. In fact, most of what I do I would classify as accounting, not stats.

Were those statistics classes for MBAs or some similar group? That’s really the only way this makes any sense at all. If so, yes, those were introductory, regardless of how they numbered them. If not, I’m going to need some more details.

Anyway, yes, you do need a strong math background to do any non-trivial statistics, especially if you want to finish a graduate-level degree and teach. Even if you’re the most applied statistician in the world, you still need to be able to understand why the techniques you’re using work and what their limitations are. That’s all math, and all way beyond high-school algebra.

[Spectre_of_Pithecanthropus]

@Beware_of_Doug

There’s a double jeopardy in a liberal arts degree lately. It not only doesn’t bring the promise of standardized skills, it’s becoming a bit of a personal statement as far as the hiring staff over at Human Robots are concerned. In their stunted, eyes-front, snap-judgment view, it says: “I lack ambition and am neither practical nor humble enough to do what the economy demands. I care more about people, feelings, and ideas than doing, producing and delivering. I am a woo-woo moonbat, whom all you spreadsheet-monkeys owe a decent living, because I don’t live to work.”

At that point, who’s going to care what skills you have?

Jeez Louse, it used to be just that you shouldn’t put your hobbies down on your resume. Has it really come to this?

After all, any non-vocational four year degree could be subject to this prejudice. Based on my own experiences in business offices, being a whiz at math or physics isn’t going to help you much more than knowing three foreign languages. For these HR drones’ purposes, isn’t physics about as useless as classical studies? Neither one will help you take charge of the business meeting or improve the company’s bottom line as much as soft skills that are probably as much innate as they can be taught.

In short…life. Leave it or loathe it, you can’t love it.

Be that as it may, if I were the OP I’d go for architecture or A. engineering. She sounds like she’d be a natural at it and has a genuine love for the purpose of learning it.