I’ve held my tongue as long as I can.  Now you, dear readers, are going to have to put up with a bit of a rant.  I don’t normally edit my stuff here, I just write it, check for grammar errors and move on.   So bear with the tangents – that’s what a rant is, after all.

If I read one more article on Yahoo from a person who doesn’t know the difference between it’s and its, compliment and complement, principle and principal, about “college majors you want to avoid,” I’m going to go postal.  I’m pretty darn close right now.  This one went even further and headlined “10 College Majors You’ll Regret.”  REGRET?????  REALLY?????

OK. So. English majors, fine arts majors, communication majors and others all supposedly score lowest on the pay AND the satisfaction meters.  Well poke me in the eye and call me stupid but I don’t put a lot of stock in such surveys.  I’ll touch on that later.

First of all, I majored in philosophy  – this article didn’ t mention it but it’s usually in the top 10 of don’t-even-think-about-majoring-in-this lists.  Never mind that it has positively informed my life and my relationships for nearly 40 years.  Never mind that I am an extraordinary physical therapist because of it.  Never mind that although I had to go back to school to get a “marketable” career in physical therapy, that career has brought me more grief and burn-out than I can ever describe.  It is only my philosophy background that has kept me sane throughout that lucrative career.

Regret?  Not about the philosophy degree, that’s for damn sure.

What really bothers me is that young people and their well-meaning parents are probably reading these articles and basing their educational decisions on two things – potential earnings, and a headline.  If you read the whole article in depth you will find that the median percentage of the people who would recommend their majors to others is 66% and feel their work makes the world a better place is 50%.  So…that means the majority would recommend those majors.  And half think they are contributing just fine, thank you very much.

I would like to know the ages of the respondents.  A 26 year old who is waiting tables may not realize that the experience may influence his art in twenty years, and that the art created may change lives.  A 26 year old may not have the wisdom of age to know that waiting on thousands of people of all personalities and quirks may make him a brilliant and beloved teacher someday.

When my oldest son was doing a career research project in high school on being a musician, the musicians he interviewed made it very clear that money is made in a hodge-podge fashion – a little teaching here, a little performing there, a little Guitar Center checkout dude…  It’s a trade off, one which my son did not want to participate in.  That doesn’t mean that those who do have made a mistake in their lives.   I think of his drum teacher, one of the nicest people I’ve ever known, who sat in that little 8 x 12 studio and taught kids, including my son, day after day.  He was there for my son week after week when Al was having brain surgery.  When Joe graduated from high school and had to write a blurb for the final symphonic band concert, he mentioned Rich not once but TWICE as an influential and important person in his young life.  I shared it with Rich.   Was Rich rich?  I doubt it.  Regret? Not likely.

I understand that college is expensive these days and that maybe a lucrative major would seem prudent.  I have put my master’s degree on hold, despite my desire to complete it, because I simply cannot afford it.   There’s another issue, though.  Supposedly health care administration is the hot new career.  What I discovered while slogging through the program is that, even if I were a younger woman and had a whole career life in front of me, I don’t want to do that.   If you are concerned that the major you want is not lucrative enough, find a cheaper school.   Trust me, it’s not the money you pay that makes your education worth it, it’s the time you put in while you’re there.

I know my readers know where I’m coming from on this and so I’m just ranting for the sake of getting it off my chest.  All I know it I chose the worst possible major ever.  Al was a communications major (at the top of the “danger” list).  And here we are, doing just fine and are happy.

Finally, the end of the article presents the caveat – it’s all about creativity, courage, drive – and it  lists famous people who majored in the dreaded top ten.   I just want to tell all the writers of those articles (I bet they didn’t major in engineering) to go to hell and let the kids of today do what they apparently did – follow their bliss, from here to eternity.

Regret?  I don’t think so.

Rant over.