I recently graduated with a liberal arts degree.
After graduation I travelled to Lima, my hometown, to spend the summer before starting a master’s program in September. Degrees are pretty straightforward in Peru. Much like majors in the US, Peruvian degrees are meant to prepare you for a specific kind of job, or at least provide you with hard skills for said job. As a high school senior, I couldn’t decide what kind of skills I wanted to gain. I had different interests that seemed to contradict or at least not come together in the form of a degree. It was under those circumstances that I stumbled upon liberal arts.
Before my first year, I remember having to read about liberal arts to explain it to my parents and friends. After my first year, I still couldn’t provide a satisfactory answer. After my second year, my parents gave up on trying to understand, they were just happy I was happy. After my third year, I was surprised at my inability to explain liberal arts without going into a critique of the Peruvian educational system. Now, after my fourth year, I fear the follow-up sentence to “congratulations on your graduation!”
“What exactly did you study?”
I fear that question not because I do not have the answer. I do have it. I studied the way historians, politicians, philosophers, filmmakers, economists, anthropologists and biologists – to name a few – think. I analyzed their ideas to find solutions for contemporary global challenges, to find meaning in that in the pursuit of solutions, and in the pursuit of meaningful solutions, I utilized or recycled their ideas to express myself.
As it usually occurs, the pursuit of meaningful solutions left many more questions unanswered, questions I am still pondering over, questions I might not ever be able to find an answer to. Still, I will continue the pursuit. I guess I could summarize liberal arts studies as the appreciation of the pursuit, even if this one does not lead to a tangible or quantifiable something.
Before the beginning of my fourth year I decided to answer the “what did you study” question. I began by listing all the introductory classes I took followed by an explanation of how all these subjects are intertwined. My interlocutor, either not satisfied with my answer or just too tired to think about my answer, cut me off and asked “okay but what kind of job do you do with that?”
Now, after completing a liberal arts degree, I can confidently say that I can perform any job I set my mind to. I perhaps would not be able to be a skillful electrical engineer within a month. But I can definitely learn the hard skills to do so in a couple of years. My liberal arts degree has granted me with skills and knowledge that are never obsolete. My ability to problem-solve, analyze, synthesize, express myself orally and in writing, work in teams, and think critically are necessary for most – if not all – types of jobs.
I fear the “what did you study” question not because I cannot answer it. I fear that question because the answer is not only unsatisfactory but, for the most part, unbelievable. For many of my interlocutors a degree is not supposed to let you perform any job. I fear that type of thinking because it implies a view on education that opposes its original purpose. Education was never supposed to limit us. Instead, it was meant to set our minds free.
Fear does not help improve this situation though. So from now, I will no longer fear these questions but confront them, in a tolerant and sensitive manner, two qualities my liberal arts degree has equipped me with.
