"What's your major?"

I've found that admitting I'm a film major is hard to do because at some point in higher education the words, "I'm a humanities major" became an insult. I'm not sure when this switch came about, or what prompted it, but I don't like it.

When I tell people that I'm a film and media studies major I get the condescending tone, squinted eyes, and the "Oh, really? What are you going to do with that?" As a science, business, or engineering major, they haven't had anyone act that way to them, so they probably don't know how awful it feels. Yet as much as it hurts to hear people be condescending to me, I feel bad because a lot of them are caught in a major their parents picked for them, or one that they're unhappy with, with a tunneled vision of the world. For them, the only road to happiness is to find a career with job security and six-digit salaries. But they'll be miserable their whole life doing it, and they take out their insecurities on people who love what they study.

However, what is most troubling is that in today's world we don't recognize the importance of the humanities. More and more, jobs are being replaced by machines and computers, which makes creativity even more important. Unlike some other majors, the careers that I want to go into can never be replaced by technology.

Also, stop to consider how much of your world, humanities major or not, is shaped by the media. How are your opinions influenced by what you watch or read? The media surrounds us, it manipulates our perceptions, and it controls what we know and what we don't through what it reports. We have a culture where more people recognize Miley Cyrus than Vice President Biden.

We live in a culture of celebrity-ism, that we're addicted to. We live in a world that has been created by the media, and it has more influence on the United States than almost anything else. Yet people consider a media studies degree to be a joke.

No, I'm not pre-med. No, I'm not an engineer. But I can take a math class and get one of the top scores in the class. I can write an essay that's "A" quality. I can balance a budget. I can analyze the significance of one line of dialogue in a film. Because my major isn't indicative of my intelligence level, it's indicative of my interests. I got into this school the same as everyone else; my selection process wasn't easier because I wanted to go into film. And I'm not a film major because I can't handle science or math classes. I'm a film major because I love my major and I love the classes that I take.

So yes, I am a humanities major, and a very happy humanities major at that.