It's happened more times than I could possibly count. I'll be speaking to somebody, a relative, a fellow student, or one of my mom's friends who happened to recognize me at the grocery store. We'll exchange pleasantries, they'll ask me what my major is, and I will tell them that I'm a Communications major and a Theater minor, although in the last two years my response has ranged from Sociology major to Theater and Physics double major. I'm an indecisive liberal arts student, what can I say? Anyway, after telling them my major, whatever it happened to be at the time, people will usually respond with, "Oh... What are you going to do with that?" And I feel the urge to reply, "Your mother," and walk away. Luckily this urge has not yet proved to be so intense that I have acted on it.
There are several reasons that the question "What are you going to do with that?" bothers me. The first of which being that it is a high pressure question usually asked by people who I have just met or rarely see. It is essentially asking someone to explain their life plan to you, just after breaking the ice. While talking about hopes, dreams, life goals and aspirations is certainly a good way to get to know someone, and in fact something that is enjoyable and important to discuss with close friends and mentors, most college students don't have it all figured out, and being asked to explain something you scarcely understand yourself briefly to a person you've just met can make a person real anxious real fast.
The second reason the question irks me so, is that it seems to be a question primarily asked to those studying the arts and humanities. I may be wrong, but I hypothesize that if I was majoring in computer science, or engineering, or business, I would not be asked to justify what I study with an explanation of what I will do with it, and would be instead be given affirmation on my choice of field and perceived skills. (Comp Sci, business, and Engineering folk, educate me. Do people ask you what you're going to do with your major?Feel free to comment and discuss.)
The third reason that I don't like to be asked "What're you gonna do with that?" is that it is frankly a bad question. I understand that it comes from a place of wanting to learn more about the person you're talking to, heck, I've been guilty of asking it myself, but it simply doesn't honor the complexity of the response it requires, and it can be embarrassing for the person you're asking if they don't happen to have an elevator speech for what they want to do with their lives. In fact, most college graduates don't even end up working in their field, at least immediately. According to the Washington Post, in 2010, only 27% of college graduates were working positions closely related to their major. So cool it with the assumption that students have any idea what their post-graduation life has in store for them.
This is not to say that you can't ask people why they study what they study, in fact, you should do just that! Rather than ask students to explain their life goals to you, ask them what about their major interests and inspires them. Ask them what they like about it, and what they have learned so far. Ask them about their past accomplishments rather than the unknowable future. Or better yet, don't demand that students talk to you about school. My favorite thing to ask new people is "What's your thing?" It gives them free reign to tell me about their job or studies if that is what is inspiring and exciting to them, but it also doesn't put pressure on them to focus on those subjects if they aren't eager to discuss them with me. "What's your thing?" gives people the freedom to share precisely what it is they care about, from their knitting habit, to their bug collection, to how they love to watch documentaries about architecture. By asking people questions about their interests rather than what they're going to do with their degree, you respect the ambiguities and complexities that their lives no doubt contain, while learning to better understand them as individuals.
