COUNTERPOINT Magazine | So, What's Your Other Major?

Throughout high school and possibly for the first week of college, the idea of choosing a major was always singular. One major, one career path. One track. Yet just as a major no longer reflects what people end up doing for the rest of their lives, neither does a major remain singular. The new trend? Double majors.

Sophomore year, Wellesley College: Dinner at 6 p.m. with a few friends, at a round wooden dining hall table, trays full of penne pasta and marinara sauce, a soda on the side. A girl whom I recognize from my Spanish class joins us at the table and begins the routine get-to-know-you conversation, which goes something like this:

"What's your major?"
"Spanish."
"Oh, is that it?"

In my head, the conversation continued like this: "Yeah. What more do you want from me?" Or perhaps, "Is that ok with you?"

Reality: "Yeah. That's it."

What is going on here? Are we proving what the Buddha said about human nature always thirsting for more, or a Western take that we're a materialistic society and cannot have just one of anything? Contrary to all the hype, in the past four graduating classes at Wellesley the lowest percentage of double majors was 28% and the highest, 31.8%. In reality, there aren't extreme numbers of people running out and declaring two majors.

It is true that majors in the past have dictated career choices. For example, a student wanting to pursue journalism would major in journalism or broadcasting in college. Even now, career-oriented schools (technological, art, etc.) have majors that are focused on specific careers. But a liberal arts education does not fit that mold. At a liberal arts college we are supposed to explore, gain intellectual diversity and be exposed to a broad array of subjects throughout our four years of college academic life. Somehow that ideal gets lost in the demands of having to know what you are majoring in and making sure to meet all those requirements. The double major exponentially elevates this frenzy.

The issue all comes down to why a person chooses to double major, or even why a student chooses a specific single major. Is it based on interest or some need to impress future graduate school admissions committees or employers? Both extremes and everything in between are always present. Samantha Jones, WC '08, is an Environmental Studies and East Asian Studies double major. Her take: "Double-majoring gives me the chance to pursue a career in either field instead of limiting myself to only one before I even leave college." She also said, "Double-majoring allows me to take the strengths of both majors and even claim a specialty--China's environment--that differentiates me from others with just one major for a future job [or] graduate study."

Jones's majors are fully career-oriented, which is certainly not a bad thing--she's aware of her interests, knows what she wants to do and is going for it. However, it is important to make the distinction between pursuing an interest and just going through routine.

Lee Cuba, a professor of sociology at Wellesley College, commented on how students perceive college. "Is it just a pass through to graduate school and students are doing what they did in high school to get to college?" Or are students consciously taking advantage of the liberal arts education they signed up for?

Alice Geilfuss, WC '08, realized that "one's major isn't really that important in determining a career path, especially at liberal arts colleges." For her, like Jones, Economics and Spanish are both interests that she wanted to pursue. The restriction? "I was gone for a whole year, so I didn't have a ton of flexibility in my classes at Wellesley."

Flexibility is key here because that is the mission of a liberal arts education. "An ideal liberal major should emphasize diversity of course work and of learning experience," says James Kodera, religion professor at Wellesley. "It should never exclude other options."

Marilyn Sides, an English professor at Wellesley, explains the other side. "Since I'm from the English department, I'd say that a double major allows a student who likes to write [and] read to do that and at the same time have a major that might be more explicitly career-oriented."

Touché.

Both arguments are fully valid. In the end, it boils down to the student and the exact subjects they choose as majors. Sometimes a double major allows for exploration of an interest while pursuing a more career-based major alongside it, like Professor Sides pointed out. And as Professor Cuba put it, "You don't go home and tell your parents that you're a theater major. They want you to make a living after college." In such a case, theater is the interest and whatever else might be tagged to it is the more "solid" major.

So, we're back to intention and what students are looking for in the first place. Are we so completely career-motivated that we don't even allow ourselves the luxury of taking a music or art history course, because it doesn't fit? Or is there genuine interest involved in choosing two fields and following them? John Cameron, a biology professor at Wellesley pointed out, "Students seem to believe that [graduate or] professional schools or employers will be impressed [by a double major], but I think that is rarely the case. The fact is that after college, most people just won't care what your major was...much less whether you had two of them."

So there we have it. As long as we students keep perspective on our side and do what we want to do, we should turn out completely ok, regardless of what other people say. This internal pressure that we inflict upon ourselves gets us nowhere, except perhaps with long lab hours, which should be pursued only if they are genuinely interesting. My point is that we must look within ourselves to fully understand why we choose to do what we are doing. What's our motivation? Where do we come from? Ultimately, as long as we can realize that these are our four years to do whatever we want with them, then life goes on. But if the only reason we choose to major in a subject is because we think it'll help in the long run, then stop. We aren't the same people we were in high school, and more than likely, we won't be who we are now within the next four years. We evolve, both in personality and in likes and dislikes. So how can we think that in these four minimal--albeit formative--years of our lives, we can set in stone the rest of our life path? I don't believe that we can, and it is with this philosophy that we must approach our education, not just to impress some unknown person or committee that we may or may not encounter in the future.

Mehroz Baig WC '08 (mbaig[at]wellesley[dot]edu) is double-majoring in Tex-Mex and arts and crafts.

February 2008
Volume 31/Issue 5

So, What's Your Other Major?

Double the pressure, double the fun.

{by mehroz baig wc '08}

February 2008Volume 31/Issue 5

So, What's Your Other Major?

Double the pressure, double the fun.

{by mehroz baig wc '08}

February 2008
Volume 31/Issue 5