Finals week prompts debate over difficulty of majors
That time of the year has come again. No, I am not referring to the holiday season, you present-obsessed minions. I am referring to finals and, more specifically, that age-old debate that accompanies finals every semester: Whose major is the hardest?
Naturally, everyone thinks his or her major is the toughest one on campus. And everyone believes that his or her degree will ultimately land him or her the most lucrative jobs. Everyone except me, of course. As an aspiring writer, I am more than happy to admit that post-college, I will be living out of a tepee and trolling the streets for cash, carrying a sign that reads ‘Spare some money for a honey’ or ‘Be nice, share your ice’ or something else along those lines.
Regardless, I always enjoy listening to other people discuss their slavish devotion to their major. You obviously can’t go wrong with a major that has a ‘bio’ prefix to it, such as bioprocess engineering or biotechnology. But no one has the slightest clue as to what you people do. It’s always interesting to see math majors make a case for themselves. And philosophy majors. And fiber majors. (As in moral fiber? Or whole grains, fruits and veggies?)
Don’t get me wrong, I’m not hating on anyone’s major. My own personal mathematical skills end somewhere around five times five. It’s just the image of all these smart people fighting over who’s smarter that entertains me so much. ‘Nerds Gone Wild,’ back for a new season.
I commend the industrial design majors for writing a thesis. I especially commend the social work majors for communicating well with others. (I’ve found that excessive human interaction is just not for me.) And I have no doubt the next Joe Biden or Betsey Johnson is walking among us. In fact, Biden and Johnson could have drunkenly slept together on some random night and had a love child named Desiree. But it could have never worked out between the two of them — he was pre-law, she was fashion design.
I once helped a political science major write his personal statement for law school applications. His roommate, a computer and information science major, typed it up. In layman’s terms, we call that group work. And do you know who’s big on group work? Whitman students. So you see, we are all connected in this world. Instead of arguing over who spends more hours in Club Bird or who shows up to his or her 9:30 a.m. class on less sleep (neither of which enhances your attractiveness, by the way), we should probably consider discussing something else, anything else. Your socks would make for a less pathetic topic.
This goes for double majors and triple majors, as well.
At the end of the day, all this haggling over whose major is hardest just reminds me of the old ‘a nun, a priest and a rabbi all walk into a bar’ joke. Except in this scenario, a forensic science major, a sociology major and a museum studies major all walk into a bar, but they obviously had too much studying to do to stay and have a drink.
Marina Charny is a senior English and textual studies and writing major. Her columns appear every Thursday, and she can be reached at mcharny@syr.edu.
