Illustration by Anaelda Ramos
When my parents’ friends used to ask me what I wanted to study in college, I always said “I don’t know — but not science or math.” When I came to WashU, I came to the shocking realization that a lot of people did want to study Science, Technology, Engineering, and Math (STEM).
If you’re like me, and you’re not really into STEM, here’s what not to do.
Like anyone who wants to study humanities, I get asked: “What are you going to do with that major, though?”; “If you study history, your options are… historian?”; and “Why don’t you add a CS [computer science] minor or something?”
I wish I could say that I didn’t listen to these people and that I continued to study the humanities with confidence and passion. But that would be a lie.
Last year, I registered for a slate of courses in the humanities and the social sciences. I was excited for these classes, until I started to question where they were taking me.
How would a class about a niche social justice topic apply to a job in the real world? I’d always heard that a STEM degree was more prestigious than a humanities one, so would I even have a job after I graduated?
I also saw people in STEM majors taking a prescribed sequence of courses and envied the structure. Humanities majors often leave a lot of room for freedom in schedules, which is great, but it’s also intimidating when it comes to decision time.
I didn’t know exactly what I wanted to study, so having as little decision-making as possible was ideal.
So, the night before the first day of second semester, I enrolled in intro Biology and Calculus courses.
Maybe I could manage to switch to a STEM major, or add a STEM minor. I thought a STEM education would make my degree worth such a costly tuition and that it would even make me employable after college.
I had never enjoyed a math class before, but somehow the rationale worked out in my mind that a college-level calculus course was where the sparks would go off. Science classes had always been alright for me, so I figured that I could get through it whether I liked it or not.
The regret sunk in just after the Add/Drop deadline.
I used the resources available and engaged with the content, but no matter how well I understood the material, I wasn’t interested in it. These big STEM courses were challenging, certainly, but I didn’t feel intellectually stimulated.
I rarely learned about a topic in biology or calculus and thought, “I want to know more about this!” If your field of study isn’t sparking curiosity beyond the syllabus, why study it?
Whether or not STEM classes would make my resume more prestigious, I didn’t care about what I was learning in them. Is the prestige and the opportunity to get a higher-paying job worth it when you just aren’t passionate about it?
Maybe. Maybe not. That question might not be as relevant as we think it is.
A study from the National Bureau of Economic Research found that STEM majors make more money right out of college, but that their peers in other fields of studies catch up in earnings within 10 years.
Philosophy majors might not be destitute, after all.
This is just to say that, if you’re thinking of studying STEM purely to make more money, you might have more to think about.
Like, what classes make you want to learn more about a subject? If these classes are in the humanities, why not delve into more of that in college?
Income prospects aside, there are a lot of reasons to study humanities other than their comparative value to STEM.
Gerald Greenburg, Senior Associate Dean of Academic Affairs at the College of Arts and Sciences of Syracuse University, wrote about the value of studying humanities in a time when less and less people are doing so.
“Through studying the humanities, one has the opportunity to get to know oneself and others better, the opportunity to become better able to understand and grapple with complex moral issues, the complexities and intricacies of humanity,” Greenburg wrote.
While true, Greenburg’s description of humanities doesn’t quell my fear of being jobless with a humanities degree.
What’s more comforting is that Greenburg believes that the skills you gain in humanities are applicable, much like the hard skills that you learn in engineering.
Not only are these skills applicable in one’s personal life, but they are also necessary in professional fields.
“Mathematics, the sciences, engineering, and technology are certainly useful, but the humanities provide another way of viewing issues, and better decisions are made when diverse opinions and ideas are considered,” Greenburg writes.
If you think you want to study the humanities or social science, know that you will learn applicable skills, even if they don’t feel as useful as Python or Java. You will be able to communicate well and analyze complex problems in a variety of fields.
And, if you take classes that spark your interest, you’ll even enjoy what you’re studying along the way.
Of course, there are factors beyond passion and pay that affect what you decide to major in. There’s family pressure and scholarship guidelines and more.
Whatever other factors are affecting your decisions, don’t let the pressure to study STEM eliminate the possibility of studying another field that you might care about.
If you’re like me, and you always preferred the humanities and social sciences to STEM, there’s nothing wrong with that. Your education will be valuable with or without a CS minor tacked on.
Explore your options, but don’t let the pressure to study STEM blur what you already know about yourself.
You don’t like math, and you probably never will. And that’s ok.
