Just the other day, I attended a Speaker Series as part of the internship program I am in. The speaker was the VP of Sourcing Accessories — in other words, the closest thing you can get to design without actually being the designer — and she brought along one of her co-workers. During the Q&A at the end of the session, a fellow intern asked how exactly the two women had ended up in their fashion-oriented positions — after all, she politely pointed out, their respective majors were Spanish and Spanish/History.

Clearly having been on the receiving end of such questions multiple times, both explained how, though their academic focuses in college appeared to stray from their current career focuses, it is simply where their passions ended up aligning. The latter described how studying history was all about the background of situations and how things ultimately went from point A to point B — similar to sourcing and how her job is to take a product from the office to the factory. Both mentioned that they didn’t simply learn only Spanish or History throughout the course of their college years — they gained valuable skills while acquiring the necessary information pertaining to Spanish and History, things like working through communication barriers and being detail-oriented.

The whole session made me think about initial reactions we all subconsciously have to hearing people’s majors. As much as I dislike when people put down my majors or someone else’s, I know that I too often conjure up some inaccurate image of a person and their future profession when I hear what they’re studying. Political science major? Probably trying to be the future POTUS. English major? Definitely wants to be a writer.

It is true that a political science major sets you up with a wealth of knowledge regarding the systems of the government, and an English major likely produces strong reading and writing skills. But does a major fully determine your career path? Does a political major have to become a politician? An English major a writer?

Particularly at a liberal arts school, students are exposed to multiple different areas of study, thanks to the requirements we have to fulfill. Thus, though classes for one’s major do take up a large portion of total courses taken, subject areas in many categories of study are not absent from our learning capacities. I have explored most in-depth English and Psychology, but I have also been educated in Environmental Science, Statistics, Theology and so forth.

It’s no one’s business but your own what you choose to study; your interests are not superior or inferior to others’ interests and passions. It’s about the skills you acquire from your area of focus and what you ultimately choose to do with them. You can learn a plethora of skills from each different majors and apply that to multiple different careers, if that's what you want to do.

In five years, people will still value what your major has taught you. But most importantly, they’ll care about your successes and how you deal with your failures. They'll care about the way in which you bring to the table everything that school and life have collectively taught you.

And hopefully they won't care about my less-than-impressive grade in freshman year Philosophy.