In true Facebook spirit, I joined the 66,035 members of the “I picked a major that I like, and one day I will probably be living in a box” group. It’s evident that, for a lot us arts majors, the fears of not finding a “well-paying” job are well and alive. Yet, I can’t bring myself to choose a career path that is merely pragmatic and won’t have any real meaning to me.
University is meant to be a period of self-exploration and gives us the very last opportunity of doing this before we venture off into the real world. We should take the opportunity to study as much literature, classics or history as we can since, after graduation, we will probably be too busy getting used to the confines of our stuffy workplace cubicles to contemplate the meaning of life in an intellectual setting ever again.
While I’m not against vocational majors, especially since these are fascinating fields of study and there are many who are naturally gifted in these areas, my point is that a student interested in art history, for instance, shouldn’t have to feel that they are on their way to a doomed future. It is, obviously, not all their fault, since there is admittedly not a huge pool of jobs that they can pick from. But a liberal arts major may be the best pick of all. More and more employers, including those much coveted investment banking firms, look for individuals who are as much at ease articulating their opinions on complex issues as they are analyzing the movements of stock prices. Liberal arts majors have a definite edge in this area.
But before we settle down into a cubicle for the rest 40 or so odd years of our working life, we owe it to ourselves to ask what we want to spend those four decades doing. While some may find their true calling in the financial world, there are probably many more who store away more idealistic dreams to get down to the drudgery of their everyday jobs. A familiar routine comes over again, as we wake up each morning to a job we don’t like, waiting impatiently for the weekend, wishing that we could change jobs, but never actually getting down to it. And, before we know it, it’s all over anyway and then, nothing matters any more.
While university is certainly a time to arm ourselves with the skills that will help us find employment later on, it need not turn into a vocational school that teaches me how to make lawn mowers so that I will be able to buy a house by the time I’m 26. While that does sound better than that much dreaded box, life is way too short for that kind of thing.
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