Major Envy

“Cause you haters got PhDs, Y’all just some major haters and some math minors” -CyHi The Prince, So Appalled[1]

In college, it was a common theme to hear students belittling one another’s majors. The english majors seemed to get it the worst. There are a number of reasons why this occurs. Part of it is due to grandstanding — my degree is better than yours; therefore, by the associative property of undergraduate degrees, I’m better than you. People who reason like this tend to be jerks and their opinion is invalid.

Another reason why there’s major envy is that students are worried that their degrees will be worthless upon graduation. This places too much of a utilitarian view on college education. A classic liberal arts education is a consumer good, it is an end in itself. While part of the mission of colleges is to graduate engaged productive citizens, that doesn’t make them factories.

The most valuable thing about college is that it forms a comfortable bridge from adolescence to adulthood. What you choose to learn in school won’t matter that much in the long term, but the life skills you learn will. Don’t be afraid to study a discipline you love because it seems useless. It’s always the useless things that prove to be the most useful[2].

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Notes

[1] CyHi’s verse on this song is one of the hardest I’ve ever heard. Also, for the uninitiated, PhD stands for playa hater degree.

[2] Steve Jobs covers this pretty well in his commencement speech.