I’m a second-semester junior. I have an entire year left before Wesleyan spits me out into the “real world,” but this certainly hasn’t stopped me from worrying about what I’m going to do next. At this point, as it’s too late to make any drastic changes in my education, it’s a good point to look back at my past decisions and how they’re going to affect my rapidly approaching future. The main decision I’m questioning is my choice of major: I’m a history and English double major, but started out in Biology, and I didn’t change until the week that major applications were due.
I know I made the right decision; I would have been miserable had I stayed in the sciences. And I know I’m not the only one who followed a path like this; it’s so common for a pre-med college student to switch to humanities after a few bio and chemistry classes that it’s essentially a cliché. I know plenty of people at Wesleyan who have made similar choices, and never looked back. So why do I still have some doubts?
I was absolutely in love with biology when I came to Wesleyan. I thought that was what I wanted to do with my life, and it was very comforting to be in a major where you felt like you had a direction after college. Being a science major doesn’t necessarily guarantee you a job, of course, but it does suggest some paths more than others. I wanted to be a doctor; there was a path set out for that. But it turns out that I actually kind of sucked at most of my classes, and I didn’t find the majority of what I was doing interesting or fulfilling. I had always taken English and history classes for fun, and I finally realized that it was time to switch.
However, as a major in the humanities, I’ve realized that I have no idea where to head after college is over. And as much as I enjoy my classes, I was starting to wonder: Am I really prepared for anything? Is there a certain direction I should be heading in?
In some majors, there is a body of knowledge that will prepare you for your future, and that is what you spend your time studying. Now, as a history and English major, I have some doubts about what I’m actually learning. Don’t get me wrong: I’m thoroughly enjoying the deep education I’m gaining in Ottoman Empire marriage laws and Elizabethan erotica, but there are times when I doubt how much that will help me in my future. Maybe I’ve become a better reader, writer, and thinker thanks to my time at Wesleyan, but I’m not sure I’ll ever be able to look back at my college education and point out something in particular and say, “That’s where I learned what I needed to get me here.” I’m going to have a diploma when I graduate, which will undeniably help open some doors for me, but it would be nice to get something more out of my education than a piece of paper.
There are plenty of people who profess that a liberal arts education is still useful. Michael Roth wrote a whole book on it. And I know my major doesn’t have to control the rest of my life: I’ve been collecting stories since high school about people who started out as film majors and ended up as the best therapists in town, or even those who were trained in organic chemistry and ended up falling in love with diaspora studies. But for me, it certainly doesn’t seem like my history and English education is preparing me for anything in particular.
And so, some self-reflection appears to be necessary at this point. I’m starting to wonder what I really wanted to get out of a college education. I know a lot of people who went to college simply because that was what was expected of them, only to realize they had no idea what they wanted and were to some extent wasting their time and money. Other people used college as a way to figure out what they wanted to do, so they had somewhere to set off from when they graduated.
Talking to seniors, it seems as though a lot of people still don’t know what they want to do. Some are terrified by this idea, but I try to ignore that. I’m more interested in what the others have to say: the ones who have no idea what they’re going to do with their lives, so they figure they might as well set out in one direction and see where they end up.
Those people are probably getting it right. I don’t know where I got the idea that I needed to know exactly what direction my life was headed in already, but it certainly doesn’t bring me anything but stress. I can definitely say that I’ve enjoyed the education I’ve gotten at Wesleyan. I’ve gotten the chance to learn about everything from fetishism in avant-garde photography to train metaphors in Indian globalism novels.
I can explore whatever future careers I want later, and there’s no way for me to know how that will turn out. So, I try to tell myself, why worry? I no longer have the security of a certain path, like I did when I wanted to be a doctor. But maybe this isn’t necessarily a bad thing. Being a humanities major might not be preparing me for anything in particular, but maybe that’s the point. I’m not completely convinced that I’m getting any applicable skills out of this, but I might as well try to stop worrying so much.
Setear is a member of the class of 2016.
1 Comment
olderAlum
There is a much greater interest in post college career plans in todays Liberal Arts Colleges than when I was at Wes. Certainly the job situation for non science and non pre-professional graduates may seem daunting, but I wouldn’t worry. You have a first class education and the most important trait for future success in any career is adaptability. Its certainly true that global competition and the rapid advance in technology is making so many jobs obsolete. Yet, the irony is that this future uncertainty in finding a job after college really hides a global job market that is starved of creative and open minded people. These latter characteristics certainly describe most Wes students and if you seek out your passion its likely you will find a job to express it. I too graduated with a degree in humanities and its never held me back despite being in a job field which is dominated by MBA toting professionals, often with a heavy math background. So, relax and make the most of your remaining time at Wes.