How many of you out there are liberal arts majors? Great! You've found something you love doing and have decided that you won't be happy working in a field that doesn't have something to do with that passion. Now, how many of you have been asked, "What do you plan on doing with that?" That's a hard question to answer, and it can even hurt sometimes. And yet even our loved ones like to be skeptical of the decisions we've made concerning our futures.
On behalf of all graduates with a B.A. in English, history, math, music, or any other liberal arts major, I'd like to say:
Screw them.
Seriously. Like everyone else on an educational path towards college, you had years and years to think about what you wanted to do with your life. Obviously you didn't want to go to nursing school like 80% of the women in your high school graduating class. Clearly you didn't have the patience, ambition, or money to pursue a career as a doctor or a lawyer or a business man/woman. Let's be honest with each other for a minute. You just loved a certain subject in high school and knew you wanted to do that forever. I fell in love with English and literature in middle school. My seventh grade English teacher, Carol Paul (may she rest in peace), instilled in me a love of reading and writing that would never fully leave me satisfied. She assured me that I had great potential, and made me promise not to ever stop writing. It was then that I knew I had to do something with my life that would allow me to keep my promise. Some might ask, "Well, why didn't you major in education?" Well, for the first two years of college, I did. But I quickly realized that it takes a special person (shout out to all of my teacher friends) to be an educator. I am not that person. I don't want to watch others read and write and grit my teeth when my patience is running thin. I want to create and discover and travel. Which, brings me to why being a liberal arts major is so smart. A person who majors in business hopes to join a business or stat their own. A nursing student most likely has ambitions to become a nurse. An education major, hopefully, wants to teach when they graduate. But what does a music major want to do? Teach? Play in a band? Work in or own a music store? Instrument repairs? Private lessons? Play for a private music group? The options are limitless. When you take classes that hone in a specific set of skills, you are more flexible. Your liberal arts degree, partnered with internships and professional experience will make you just as desirable as someone who focused on a marketing, business, or education degree.
Don't let other people make you feel like you took the easy way out. You took general education courses like everyone else. You had to maintain your grades like everyone else. You stayed up into the wee hours of the morning studying for finals like everyone else. The only difference between you and "real degrees" is that you wanted your options to be limitless.
