I am a psychology major who hates math with my entire being, studying at one of the best engineering university in the country. I get that practically everyone around me is studying to be an engineer and that’s great. But what’s not great is the judgment towards non-stem majors, specifically education majors. I see the judgment every, day all the time and it’s wrong.

When did STEM become the end all and be all of everything? Don’t get me wrong I think engineering and math and biology are important. I benefit from the knowledge of these fields every single day. But I also realize that I benefit immensely from the knowledge created in fields like communications, psychology, and education.

Many students scoff at early education majors, but I don’t think they realize how important early education teachers are. Elementary age children are learning the most important basic things like how to read and develop critical thinking skills. Elementary teachers have a unique opportunity to be a major impact on their lives. Think about it, if the youth are the future then don’t you want the teachers of those youth to be well trained. Yeah, thought so. Every single student at this university is here because of a long line of teachers who taught them all they needed to know and supported them along the way.

Have you ever noticed that the majors that get bashed also tend to be the majors that are traditionally studied by females? Majors that involve traditionally feminine characteristic such as being caring, expressive, or interact with kids. Why do we do this? Men and women alike should be praised for wanting to study a major that helps others and allows them to use their skills to fulfill their passions regardless of the low pay grade.

Again, I don’t want to be misunderstood, I am 100 percent behind programs that encourage school-age girls to pursue STEM majors and increase the opportunities for girls to do incredible things like send rockets to mars and design skyscrapers but in some ways, we have taken this in the wrong direction.

We need to encourage young girls, and boys for that matter, to pursue whatever they want! We need to stop forcing our youth to pursue certain careers for any external reason. Pressure to stay away from certain majors becomes internalized and leads to the “major-bashing” that occurs now.

So if you are a future engineer. If the thought of one day building the world's tallest tower fills you with the purest joy imaginable. If you actually enjoy spending hours working on computer code until it finally works.

Stop for a second and think about how there are future teachers out there, who get pure joy from helping a child finally understand how to perform long division. Who actually enjoy spending eight hours a day with your future children. Please think about the next time you are about to make a sly comment about how they are