Weird Hand Ahhhhh!

What College Taught Me, and Why Impracticality Can Sometiems Be Practical

I majored in history in college, and I can't tell you how many times people asked me if I planned on teaching history after I got my degree. To them it seemed like a perfectly logical question, because if I didn't plan on becoming a history teacher why would I be studying it at all? Wasn't it a waste of time to study a subject with no certain career path after graduation. But I was miffed the first time I heard it. I had never thought about what I would do with my degree. I had chosen to study history because it interested me, not because of any practical applications it presented.

I think many adults, and their children as a result, have a rather narrow view of what a college education means for one's career. Parents generally want their children to do well, it's hardwired into their DNA. But often the good intentions of parents, and the narrow-mindedness of adults more generally, have placed practical considerations about job prospects and salary potential above what college is really supposed to be about, finding out what you want to do with the rest of your life, or at least deciding where you want the rest of your life to start. The fact is, no career path is certain. People of my generation are unlikely to end their career where they started it.

Furthermore, every job requires some on the job training, and most of the jobs college graduates aspire to require extensive on the job training. That means that no matter what you learned in college, you're going to have to keep on learning once you get a job. So ultimately, college should prepare its students to become life-long learners, to be good at learning, to know how to think creatively, to know what questions to ask, to write well, to reason and argue well, in short, college should teach students how to learn and apply what they learn to a wide range of problems because that is exactly what they are going to be doing in the workforce.

Majors are essentially irrelevant. The jobs that most college students want require either further graduate study or advanced on the job training. Either way, what counts is adaptability, creativity, problem-solving ability and smarts, which are all traits that can be honed as effectively in the Art History Department as in the Business School.

Frankly, I got tired of being asked whether I would teach history when I was done with college. There is plenty of time to be practical in this life. College is four years where one is free to fully indulge in self-exploration , to examine the limits of the self, the possibilities for the future, and joy of being young. The fact is, the only way to do well in college and in life is to work at something you're interested in and care about. If you want to be an engineer then be an engineer, but don't do it because your parents want you to, or because it pays well. Everything pays well if you're good enough at it and you work hard enough at it and you get a little lucky. I hear those starting salary figures for what engineering majors make coming out of college and it makes me want to tear my hair out. Who cares what you make when you start out? It's what you make when you finish that counts!

As I mentioned before, the reason I majored in history is that history interests me. I can think of no other discipline that quite so comprehensively covers that maddeningly complex and fascinating creature, man. But as an added benefit I graduated college with no predetermined direction. I was free to pursue any avenue of employment that suited me, armed only with the skills I had sharpened through a four-year exploration of the liberal arts. What would all of that ivory tower wisdom mean to me? Everything. College opens your eyes to the wider world, allowing you to find your place within it. At its best college teaches you to question everything, to argue more persuasively, to think differently, to think more creatively, to write better, to read better, to love learning. I can think of no more practical skills than these. They're worth more than a thousand accounting classes, and they're what parents should care about because they are the ticket to a bright and prosperous future.