Author Topic: Liberal Arts Majors unite!  (Read 24088 times)

greaper007

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Re: Liberal Arts Majors unite!
« Reply #100 on: December 19, 2014, 11:48:08 AM »
I don't agree with the do what you love thing always.    For some people I've met, they have to.    Some of my friends that were artistic had to play music, some started a band and some majored in music education.    I don't think they could have survived if they didn't play music.

For the rest of us, I think  you have to follow your interests and talents.    Most engineers I know liked math and logic related courses better than say English or history.    So they followed their interests and talents to engineering.   If someone isn't gifted in that relm, or they don't have a genuine interest, then they're destined to fail.

Frankly, I made a huge mistake becoming a pilot after college.    I don't regret it, but I had a feeling at the time that I really didn't want to do this for a living.   I had watched my dad work 3 days a week and earn $300,000 for my entire childhood, I also had dad issues and desperately wanted to please him (though it took therapy to figure that out).   5 years later I quit.    I find that if you don't like what you're doing you probably won't be happy, or very good at your job.

SisterX

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Re: Liberal Arts Majors unite!
« Reply #101 on: December 19, 2014, 01:26:14 PM »
Quote
Ah, another difference in opinion.  My daughter will also most likely go to college one day and, while I will help her out and offer suggestions, I do not think that it's my job as a parent to "steer" her in a certain direction.  By the time she's old enough for college, I'd like to think that I will know her well enough that I can offer advice about what to pursue which is in line with her interests and abilities, rather than in a direction which I deem to be good because she will earn a good paycheck.  Even if she came to me asking about two different majors I would either ask questions in such a way that would, hopefully, lead her to come up with her own answers (a skill I learned while getting my degree!) or suggest a double major. 

Yeah, by steer I meant we totally plan on browbeating my son into doing exactly what we want all the time.  Everyone knows that you can't be in STEM and capable of thinking for yourself.  To this end we've arranged his marriage already (got an exceptional dowry to aid in FI!), decided he'll have two kids, and will make at least 200k a year as a cowboy astronaut.  To ensure his virginity until marriage his spare time will be strictly spent deriving equations and playing AD&D.  As engineers we learned no soft skills while getting our degrees, so this plan seemed fantastic to us.

:P

That is, obviously, not even remotely close to what I meant.  I just think it's dangerous to say you're going to steer your kid in any particular direction because I've seen even mild forms of that completely backfire, and all parties end up angry and bitter. 
Besides, why would anyone want to tell their kid who to be?  So much more fun to discover who your child already is, particularly since that changes so much over time.

GuitarStv

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Re: Liberal Arts Majors unite!
« Reply #102 on: December 19, 2014, 01:36:09 PM »
If you find someone who wants to tell their kid who to be, you be sure to let them know all that.

greaper007

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Re: Liberal Arts Majors unite!
« Reply #103 on: December 19, 2014, 02:07:25 PM »
I'm sure GuitarStv is a fine parent.    Hopefully his son will love STEM (considering that there seems to be a genetic link between talent, he may very well love it).   And there won't be any arguments.

SisterX

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Re: Liberal Arts Majors unite!
« Reply #104 on: December 19, 2014, 05:34:15 PM »
I'm sure GuitarStv is a fine parent.    Hopefully his son will love STEM (considering that there seems to be a genetic link between talent, he may very well love it).   And there won't be any arguments.

Don't bet on it.  Both my parents got advanced degrees in STEM fields!

viper155

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Re: Liberal Arts Majors unite!
« Reply #105 on: December 19, 2014, 06:36:41 PM »
Having a useless degree is no different than having no degree at all in a lot of cases. People with degrees are not necessarily smarter they just know more shit out of a book. I'll take a street smart guy any day of the week.

SwordGuy

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Re: Liberal Arts Majors unite!
« Reply #106 on: December 25, 2014, 05:25:43 PM »

You can't go into a STEM job with a degree in writing, painting, or music.


I'm not sure that's true.

 I had a really good conversation with a top-notch Human Resources VP for an international corporation.  One major technology company she worked for had done a study on their best programmer/analysts and found that a strong music background was one of the best predictors of a really good programmer. 

It's been quite a few years since that discussion but I expect that knowledge got out into the marketplace.

SwordGuy

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Re: Liberal Arts Majors unite!
« Reply #107 on: December 25, 2014, 05:33:42 PM »
My degree was in Political Science with a minor in History and Economics.

I got into computers by complete accident.

I also found out that I was much better trained to be a programmer/analyst/data modeler that most computer science majors I ran into.

They knew more about the technical bits than I did (starting out, anyways), but they didn't know how to recognize what the business person's problem actually was.  They didn't know how to distill that problem into its essence and solve it.   They didn't know why the soft factors inherent in human nature, economic realities or historical beliefs and attitudes had the effect on their project plans that they did and were unequipped to predict it.  Their data models were muddled because they didn't really know how to define their terms and get to the heart of what they were modeling.   Nor could they communicate what they knew in terms that their business audience would understand or care about.  I got all that from my majors.

Learning to program and data model was easy compared to that.

 

Wow, a phone plan for fifteen bucks!