Difficult is a relative term. What does difficult mean? Difficult is defined as “needing much effort or skill to accomplish, deal with, or understand.” What could be a challenge for one person could be a piece of cake for another. I have friends that are studying to be nurses, engineers, physician’s assistants, occupational therapists and so on and so forth. I have no desire to make a career out of any of those fields, it’s not what I am interested in and it’s not what I am good at. I watch my friends struggle and study and study and struggle some more. Many people would say those are “difficult majors,” but to me, that is all relative. Most of my friends have been supportive (at least to my face) of my pursuit to a communication arts degree, so this article is more targeted to my fellow college students who belittle and look down upon me because my major isn’t “difficult.”
“You are studying communication because it’s easy aren’t you?” No, no I am not. Excuse me, this isn’t underwater basket weaving… my course load is no walk in the park! Just because I am not spending hours upon hours studying bones and muscles, or crying over physics and civil engineering classes, doesn’t mean I am not working equally as hard as my friends in the math, science and health fields. While you are taking lab exams, I am giving 15-minute speeches by memory in front of my whole class.
Let’s face it; what we are all doing is “difficult.” Being in college is “difficult.” So let’s not sit here and pretend someone is working harder than someone else in a particular major. No, I don’t know what the brachial plexus is, even though my roommates have drawn it at least 700 times! But I also know that you can’t do a semiotic analysis of a medium. Or would you like to take a crack at rhetorical theory? Do you even know what those words mean?
“Like how much money will you make?” I don’t care actually, but thank you for asking. Please continue to brag about your six-digit figure salary you will eventually be earning. (P.S. here is a humble reminder that you aren’t earning that yet!!) Honestly, life is not all about money, and big houses and expensive cars. Trust me I would love all of that stuff too, but at what cost? I would rather work hard doing something that I love rather than being miserable every day at work because I wanted to make a lot of money. As long as I have enough money to provide for my future family, I will be satisfied.
Just because you spend hours in open lab studying something you are passionate about, doesn’t make my passion any less important. I spend hours analyzing and studying how people communicate and I apply it in my everyday life. I am a Communication Arts major, and that does not make me inferior. I did not take the “easy way out.” From all us college students in underappreciated majors, I beg you to stop looking down on us and please remember, the “difficulty” of your major does not invalidate mine.
