TBP’S GUIDE TO PICKING A COLLEGE MAJOR

(This post has been sent to go play in Traffic. And I, for one, welcome my new FARK overlords.)

Since college students are a significant portion of TBP’s readership (I think one of my seven readers is in college), and choosing a major is probably the fourth or fifth most important part of the college experience, I thought I’d help some of you along with a guide to what you can expect if you choose to major in certain popular fields of study. After all, you don’t discover what some of these majors are really like until you’re 24 credits into them, and by then it’s too late to turn around. So, to prevent educational disasters like the several I experienced, forthwith, I preventpresent the TBP Guide To Picking A College Major. We’ll go through the academy department by department . . . which is what I did for my first two and a half years of college.

Accounting is a great field for those whose idea of a good time is trying to figure out if the fourth debit on page D41 of the ledger is supposed to be $438.43 or $484.33. Accounting majors alphabetize their gardens and organize their sock drawers based on predicted date of replacement.

Art majors spend four years in near-total isolation preparing for careers at which they will probably never get a chance to succeed. This is why you see art majors and college basketball players hanging out together all the time.

Art history involves four years of looking at slides and going to museums, and forty-five years of working the 3 to 11 shift at Domino’s.

Biology is a good major for those who aspire to be doctors. Biotechnology is a good major for those who aspire to be Dr. Frankenstein.

Business administration would seem to be a good major for those who want high-paying jobs after graduation. After all, the want ads are full of jobs for which a degree in business is required. So remember, if you long for the sort of job that’s so mind-shatteringly boring employers are forced to advertise its availability, major in business.

Chemistry majors have to endure all manner of snickering about the possible illegal uses of their studies. You should only major in chemistry if you have a thick skin or a well-trained goon squad.

Communications majors live in absolute denial of how little money talk-radio hosts and TV reporters actually make.

Computer science used to be a great way to get on board the gravy train. Now it’s a great way to wind up eating Gravy Train.

Economics: There are those who say that religion is despicable because it is nothing more than a bunch of unprovable assertions about that which is ultimately unknowable; furthermore, these assertions are frequently contrary to plainly-evident fact and represent nothing more than a backhanded attempt to rule the world by means of subjugating humanity through the application of ritualistic mumbo-jumbo which means nothing to the non-brainwashed. I didn’t realize economics was a religion until I wrote this paragraph.

Education is a great major for those who have always wanted to be blamed for all of society’s problems, from drug abuse to property taxes. If you’ve got buckets of unwanted self-esteem you just can’t get rid of, hasten thee to the teachers’ college.

Engineering students spend four years in agony, taking brutal math and science classes. Many would-be engineers wash out and wind up in easier fields, like Middle East peace negotiations. But the dirty little secret is that engineering students smile so much at graduation because they know they’ve solved their last differential equations and can spend the rest of their careers just looking things up in handbooks.

English was in danger of dying out as a field of study due to a lack of lunatic interpretations around which to structure doctoral theses. Then along came Jacques Derrida and the twin demons of deconstructionism and semiotics, ensuring that PhD candidates will never lack for thesis material again, since it just might be possible that Julius Caesar is actually about Shakespeare’s deeply-sublimated fetish for root vegetables.

Geography: If you’ve ever thrown a hand full of pocket change on the table and spent three hours staring at the patterns it formed, you may be a budding geographer. Either that, or you just drank a full bottle of cough syrup. Otherwise, geography is a great major for people who think that they may one day be called upon to prove that, in fact, they can find certain parts of their anatomy with two hands and a map.

Geology majors usually find some sort of employment in the oil industry. Sometimes this is great; when the awl bidness is booming, the money flows like . . . well, like oil. But it’s fickle; you might also find yourself unemployed and trying to sell a house in Dalhart, Texas. Either that, or you’ll wind up as Vice-President, and I am not sure which fate sounds worse.

History is based on the idea that, if I know the winning lottery numbers for the past five years, I stand a better chance of picking tonight’s winning numbers.

Mathematics majors find employment as teachers, statisticians, actuaries, and stadium gatekeepers.

Philosophy is the biggest scam in academia. I ought to know; it was my undergrad major. In philosophy, you don’t have to be right; you just have to sound like you’re not wrong.

Political science appeals to three basic types of people: Pre-law students (insert punchline here), persons interested in foreign service (while we do have diplomatic missions in Paris, Fiji, and the Bahamas, bear in mind that we also have people in Gdansk, Ouagadougou, and Ulaan Bator), and persons who are actually interested in politics. The latter are guaranteed perpetual employment, since the only thing more difficult to explain than the ridiculous, self-contradictory behavior of politicians is the ridiculous, self-contradictory behavior of voters.

Public administration students spend four years in college doing the college-student thing, then two more years in in grad school. At the end of this, they get a government desk job. Why everybody doesn’t major in public administration, I’ll never know.

Sociology majors study complicated problems without any feasible solutions. It’s a great major if you one day expect to be named head coach of the Arizona Cardinals. Social work is the major to pick if college football is more your speed.

Hopefully, this will help out those of you who are uncertain about the future path of your life. Just remember, though, that ultimately, you can’t put a price on the value of a well-rounded education.

OK, actually, you can. How does $400 a month for the next 30 years sound?