I know that I don’t have many readers who are at the stage of choosing a college major, but Jonathan just published a really great long post with very useful advice on the subject. As a student advisor, I often meet students who chose a major that sounded cool and prestigious, like “Communications” and who in their senior year have no idea what people who majored in this vaguely defined field do for a living. I have tried to get students to explain to me what “Communications” as a field of knowledge means but all I get in response is a lot of hand-waving and vague, incomprehensible noises. This is not aimed at picking on Communications. Crowds of people go into Marketing, for example, (for personal reasons I am very familiar with the field) only to discover upon graduation that the industry is nothing like what they’d imagined. Here is part of the advice that Jonathan provides:
Beware of “generic” majors like “communications” and “international relations.” I’m talking about majors that attract students that don’t really know what they want to do, so they choose a major that sounds vaguely interesting and popular. There are a lot of communications majors, so what is going to make you stand out, if you chose the major because it sounded vaguely interesting? And everyone else did too? If you have a passion for sociology, go for it, but don’t major in it because that’s what your sorority sisters do.
One thing that I would add to Jonathan’s great article is the following: if there is a field of knowledge that fascinates you, that makes you want to bring a cot and bunk down in front of the department’s door during the weekend, then this is the field you need to choose, even though it might sound completely unprestigious and people keep telling you that you will never find a job if you major in it.
I have a student who loves Spanish. He probably loves it as much as I do, which is a lot. He is constantly hanging around our department, trying to organize Spanish-related activities with other students, coming by my office, using any opportunity to speak the language. I have no idea how he finds time to do anything else since he is always around our department. This student, however, not only isn’t majoring in Spanish, he isn’t even doing a minor in it. He wanted to initially but then he got discouraged by all the “you need to choose something more practical” talk that people kept giving him. There is nothing practical, in my opinion, in forcing yourself into a career that doesn’t make you light up when you think of it. When I first started taking undergrad courses in Hispanic Studies, I once heard my father say to a friend, “I’m not sure I understand what she is doing but I can see that she starts glowing whenever she talks about it, and that’s good enough for me.”
Choosing a major just because you think it will end up bringing you more money than the field you really love is like rejecting a person you are crazy about in favor of somebody you don’t much like because s/he is rich. In the long run, it is never worth it.
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Your last point is what I was trying to get at in my last paragraph:
Ceteris paribus, major in something that you will be very, very good at. It is probably better to be an exceptional student in a major where you will be at the top of your class, than to major in something where you will be a mediocre student, just because you think that it is the practical thing to do or because someone else tells you to. People really want to hire people who exude genuine confidence bred of competence in something specific, and opportunities are more likely to flow from excellence in something offbeat than from being one communications majors among dozens (not to pick on one field or anything).
I think I should have also said, something that you really love. I’m assuming that you can find a way to do well in something you love that much, or that something you’re that good at will also be something you can’t live without.
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Jonathan, off-topic: have you seen the discussion in the post on How to Turn a Dissertation into a Book? I’d love to hear what you think about it. Because it kind of made me sad.
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I think it’s hard to give generic advice about dissertation to book, so people hit the obvious points first. Most of the points won’t be applicable to any given person–either too obvious or not relevant to the individual case. There’s no reason to be sad because of a well-meaning person on the internet.
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That makes me feel better already. I agree about the uselessness of generic advice. This is why in a How To book on the subject I would like to see the kind of advice that you offer on your blog: how to organize the writing process, how not to get boggled down or discouraged, etc.
This dissertation-to-book project has become such a sore point with me that even the most well-meaning advice like the one in that comment brings me almost to tears. But it also makes me want to get the book out and show ’em all who’s right. 🙂
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I am wondering what Rachel Maddow majored in in college. Lots of Communications majors apparently want to go into TV news.
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Public Policy as an undergrad and then a PhD in Political Theory.
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So true. I was one of those lucky ones that chose the major I wanted from the beginning. Even better, I added another major that I also loved. English and political science.
Two majors that Jonathan mentioned, Communications and Journalism, are really useless, in my mind. Journalism doesn’t teach you how to write, and write well, it teaches you only one specific (dry and bland) form of writing. It was painful listening to the journalism students in the few political science classes that they were required to take. Likewise it was painful reading their writing in the student paper. They didn’t know how to write, and they didn’t know what they were talking about.
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I’m three semesters away from getting my Masters in International Relations, but I’m mainly using that as a springboard to help improve my understanding of the world before I launch into getting my Juris Doctor in International Law. My undergrad degrees are in Asian Studies, Humanities/Liberal Studies, and Japanese. I treasure what I learned in each of them, though I will admit a few of the classes were useless. 😉 I hope that my background in arts, languages, culture, and literature will make me attentive and articulate enough to be a good lawyer by noticing the little things and picking up on details others may miss.
Enough about me though. In my (Admittedly limited) experience in college, the unholy trinity of useless degrees which entice people with the promise of a good job post-college are Communications, Social Work, and Pre-Law. What you said about Communications majors sums it up.
The Social Work majors scare me with how dim-witted they tend to be, considering the serious situations they’ll be asked to handle once in their field. I’ve proctored social work classes, and the material presented could be done by a sleeping middle school student.
Pre-law is, more or less, a design-your-own major course load, and they tend to, ironically, have some of the poorest LSAT scores of the people who take them. If anyone did have an interest in going into law, I’d warn them away from the pre-law major at all costs.
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I couldn’t agree more. In Canada, business degrees (BComm) could be added to this. People who get a BComm at McGill, for example, do not have to take a single course outside of their program. (They can but they don’t have to). Most of what they are taught about business within their programs is completely useless. As a result, you have graduates who are completely devoid of any knowledge about the world and whose vision of marketing or HR is completely outlandish. My sister keeps trying to place such people into job vacancies but it’s extremely hard.
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I sometimes argue, tongue-in-cheek, that universities are striving for content-free degrees.
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I didn’t even go into business majors in my original post. Contentlessness is a major problem, which I link to the idea that you can do “critical thinking” without having anything to think about.
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What if you know what you want, but you aren’t old enough? My son, 16, wants to start on his Associates in EMS at the college he’s been going to, but you need to be 18. He’s got his diploma, got some college credit, but he’s 16! He then thought the military could be an option, and you can be 17 with parental permission to join, but unless his Dad is back from Iraq I don’t see him doing that in October. I guess it’s good to have an idea of a major or degree that you want to attain, but I have firsthand experience of an upset teen right now who feels he is ready to start on a career path and is being denied.
I know, he has the rest of his life to work, but if you love what you do – it’s not work.
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Actually, I totally understand. I had that upset teen on my hands when she was 16 years old but, thankfully, Canadian system of education provides great options for those cases. I’m not sure what EMS means, but couldn’t your son take some extra-credit courses in the meanwhile? Like foreign languages (which is always useful to have) or some courses specifically oriented towards the career of his choice that will not bring in college credit but still provide useful knowledge.
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Emergency Medical Services, I believe. The techs that ride along in the ambulance and, well… you get it. But of course, Liese could be referring to something completely different.
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Yes, Emergency Medical Technician (Emergency Medical Services) then training to be a Paramedic. Since he had enough credits to graduate, he is just going to keep taking courses at the local college. But, besides another English class, a Bio and a Math, the other courses are geared for the EMT degree.
I’m going to keep checking and maybe he can take the course through his Civil Air Patrol squadron instead. He’s an officer, he’s already the head of ES and there is a mentor in place. He’d still be taking basic courses to get credits, that way he can transfer them to any field.
On a side note – he did end up making an ‘A’ in his freshman English class and he did like it. He wrote 5 essays and 4 of them were his style, but what I really found interesting is that he started writing a book! True, it’s about a zombie filled cemetery and its gun wielding protector, but it’s not bad.
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You’re right, this is so cool that you can quote the person to whom you’re replying. It makes it easier to follow along.
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