“So…what can you going to do with that?”
In due time, any liberal arts major is more adapted and attuned to have formulated and fashioned the perfect response to this really annoying question forced upon us by STEM majors and baby boomer family members alike. Luckily, we have been endowed with the sheer cunning wit and resourcefulness our abstract degree titles embody. “Oh, just about anything.”
The most popular majors continue to be those in the ballpark of the B.A.; and for good reasons, too. While more and more students are earning degrees in STEM fields, social sciences remain and retain their high popularity among students.
There are many misconceptions that connoted to the B.A. that are frankly just B.S. Of these is the grandstanding view that liberal arts degrees are “easy” and devoid of any challenge, and thus without as much academic merit. Yet, studying the humanities and social sciences provides ample opportunity to explore theories, develop conclusions and connections, and apply a level of insight and analysis unique to you in your field–as that engineer is still struggling to grasp the preliminaries of their jargon jammed subject with a rigged grading scale. Yes, the stalk is toughest at the pedagogical plant’s STEM; but, the flourishing fauna of of the arts allows us to surpass that level.
Qualitative Skillsets Necessary for Any Job
Are so called “soft skills” really that soft? Knowing technical skills will do you wonders on the computer and on paper, but having communication skills and being articulate will allow you to navigate work and personal connections and relationships. Employers and employees alike want-and need-those who work well with other workers and are able to coordinate and communicate to help reach a common goal. Half of collecting and organizing data is the subsequent process of analyzing and interpreting the significance of those numbers or findings; a process of chipping at the thematics most carefully and cogently honed in your history and English classes.
They Teach You How to Think
…And it is thanks to these skills in writing, summarizing, analyzing, and critical thinking skills that questions can be posed rather than merely answered to form solutions to problems you didn’t really expect existed. Taking initiative in any aspect of a firm or in life demands that one thinks out of the box, critically as well as creatively think about and into the topic at hand, and surmount expectations that are the bare minimum in a boundless brain.
Workplace aside, it is a little dystopic to envision an entire subset of people knowledgeable enough to keep the machines going but not so much reared in understanding, on a philosophical or civic level, much beyond that. Its nice to keep the gears running, but it’s more important that we keep humanity functioning.
I suppose I didn’t need Arendt or Socrates to warn me of the dangers of unchecked evil, but reading their musings were certainly instrumental in ensuring I didn’t have pretensions to even thinking I was that too far removed from the grasp of groupthink.
The Job Market is Not That Predictable
If you’re at wits end with yourself because you don’t know what you are doing with yourself, congrats-your lack of conviction is just reflective, not antithetical to, a job market with no sense of commitment itself. The nature of today’s career paths undergoes as many changes as you did in your myriad middle school phases.
Just a year or two ago, law school students were lamenting the bleakness of their job market–and even the medical field is said to be highly saturated as it is competitive.
While it is not entirely true that over 80% of jobs are hidden, an information heavy world where one’s knowledge can’t keep up with the pace of things renders job seekers better off honing a wide variety of skills rather than putting all their eggs in an occupational basket that a lot of other students are flooding into as well.
More Options, Not Less
When people ask the ubiquitous “What are you going to do with that?” it really is an untactful way of expressing confusion over your decision over an un-obvious, non-pre professional major that lends itself to sooo much uncertainty due to the job description failing to appear in the name of the degree. Yet given a volatile job market and the fact that the average millennial will change jobs multiple times (an estimated 4 times in the first decade out of college), a flexible college track may very well be the best option.
Resourcefulness and Creativity
With less certainty at first glance lends itself to more opportunity to explore different or less considered career paths. The educational process involved in a liberal arts education is primarily characterized by the creativity it instills: which come to use in our post-collegiate life. “It’s not the degree–it’s what you make of it,” we constantly tell ourselves ; thus, we are well acquainted with the merits of extracurriculars, various internships, and networking, networking, networking.
But of course, this isn’t the only way one can tap into their potential. That project you did, that coding you can do, that art you made, that writing portfolio you acquired–all of it, any of it and every bit of it can, in some capacity, serve as assets and resources for you to pitch your selling points for yourself. If you feel uncomfortable with having to “sell yourself” to get a job, just be reassured that “being yourself” through many mediums works just as well–if not, a lot better.
Because it doesn’t pigeonhole you into one job
And as job hopping, world changing idealogues, we wouldn’t have it any other way…
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