“So, what are you majoring in?” an aunt who I hadn’t seen for 10 years asked me with an interesting smile. The room buzzed with friendly familial energy as extended relatives floated from person to person, catching up with easy small talk.
“English,” I replied. My answer was met with a brief moment of silence. The word hung in the air like a low gray fog while the members of my circle attempted to figure out how to respond to an answer that wasn’t “Biology” or “Mechanical Engineering.”
“Um...what are your plans for that?” An uncle tried to save the conversation, but the atmosphere suddenly felt delicate and uneasy. When the point that all my cousins had biology degrees was brought up, it didn’t come across as informative, but rather as an attempt to invalidate my decision to pursue English.
This wasn’t the first time I had experienced a response like this. When you decide to pursue a degree that doesn’t directly lead to a career path, people tend to question your motives. After all, the humanities degree seems useless. Who cares about history? Who cares about literature? Who cares about art? Employers don’t. They care about what you can do for their business, and being able to talk about the significance of Chaucer simply doesn’t cut it.
But see, the humanities degree, or at least a valuable one, is more than a bunch of books you read and facts you memorized during a wasted four years filled with nonstop partying. In the process of obtaining a humanities degree lies the power to truly create your own experience. The education it provides is the closest thing to freedom.
I can’t speak for other areas of study, but studying literature involves sitting around a table and attempting to flesh out detailed complexities uncovered in the latest readings, which never leads to any absolute conclusions. This may seem like utter BS and an easy A, and in the case of lower level classes, it often can be. But if done thoroughly and correctly, these methods are actually a means of realizing through the mode of literature that the human experience is far too complex to ever truly convey, understand and control. The moment you figure out that you cannot control anything is the moment you stop fearing failure. It is the moment you are set free.
The humanities do more than allow you to pursue the path less traveled--they allow you to navigate paths only you can see. By removing you from concrete truths and theories, they give you the ability to think critically and create ones that are entirely your own. There’s a reason why the rapidly growing and dynamic tech industry has an eye out for creative-minded liberal arts students, and it’s certainly not for their software engineering skills and coding know-how.
So no, my career path is not dependent on any skills I will learn in college. My obsession with complicated literature and knowledge of medieval bookmaking techniques is completely useless in the context of the “real world.” But I have something that my science and math-inclined counterparts don’t--the ability to create my own.
