At last! I’ve finally come up with something to say when people ask me, “What pet peeves do you have?” And like all good pet peeves, I can rant about this for a fairly long time.
Ladies and gentlemen, may I introduce to those of you who haven’t already figured this out, the concept that dismissing another person’s degree is extremely insulting.
I am sick and tired of hearing people say anything along the lines of: “History is useless. Maths is so boring. You can’t do anything with a Fine Arts degree. Commerce students are just in it for the money. An Economics degree makes you more employable than a Sociology degree.”
Besides the many ways in which I would love to refute these points, my overriding request is for people to stop saying things like these. It’s one thing when a person asks you for your opinon and it’s another thing when someone just happens to say what they’re interested in doing and then you start criticising their choices. Who on earth do you think you are to start telling another person what they want to do is, whether you say this in so many words or not, somehow wrong or worse than what you’re doing, hmm? You don’t go around telling someone their profession is completely useless — certainly I hope you don’t, because then you need some serious lessons in social interaction — so why tell someone their degree is useless? You respond badly when someone starts dissing your subject. This is a form of personal attack whether you mean it that way or not; people will get hurt and angry at such thoughtless comments.
So what if you think they’re making the wrong choice? What is it to you? Are you suggesting everyone should take up an Economics or Commerce degree in the hopes of being more employable? I’m sure all the finance graduates this year thought the way you did; they didn’t see the current crisis coming. Besides which, if you are so desperate to get employed, why are you suggesting to other people to join your degree? More graduates means more competition; there are only so many jobs on offer. Sure you may think you have a lot of choices, but the world is not a purely economic or commercial one, despite what you think — there are hundreds, thousands, tens upon thousands of other jobs required in other sectors of society. Society is not as lopsided as you; if everyone wanted to be a banker, there would be no teachers or doctors or bus drivers or chefs or singers or city planners or artists or writers or engineers or scientists or any of the hundreds of different people you encounter everyday. Whether you want to be one or not, you need to admit that you need your hairdresser. And you can be whatever you like to be — just give other people that space to be what they want too.
There is not a single soul out there who isn’t somewhat concerned about what they are going to do after graduation. Commerce and Engineering may seem a little more straightforward, but you don’t know for sure just what job you’re going to get after you graduate. Do you think it’s really that easy to get a job? Average job search: six months. Six months of working hard everyday sending applications out and combing the ads for something. I have never heard anyone say that a particular degree means you’ll be employed faster. The jobs go to those who are experienced and who can do what they do. No one is going to pay you to be bad at what you do, so you’d better be doing something that you’re good at.
Life changes. It slaps you in the face. The financial crisis I mentioned before is a good example. People have personal family crises too — loved ones die, sometimes people have to go home abruptly and start doing work they never thought they would do because they need to take care of other people. Responsibilities land on your doorstep. New jobs are created. Old jobs are phased out. Working life is a long, long time, spanning several decades. Do you truly think that you’ll find one career for life and that it’ll stay forever? A career counsellor once told me that there was a study saying that our generation will have three different careers on average. Careers, mind you, not jobs — entirely different fields. Do you think you can just plan out your life like that and expect it to happen just the way you want? Because you’re deluding yourself, and if you don’t believe me, don’t worry — sooner or later, you will.
That has got to be one of the most annoying sentences in the world, being told “I’m right and you’re wrong.” But you know what? That’s exactly what you do all the time and it bugs my peace out of me.
You don’t have to like what I like or think it interesting. But just because you don’t like or get it doesn’t make the subject itself worthless or boring — just because you can’t see the bigger picture doesn’t mean that subject won’t fall into place somewhere. You have no authority to say, “What you’re doing is pathetically useless!” It’s insulting, it’s hurtful, and it denies other people the right to enjoy what they enjoy or do what they want to do.
So please: back off.
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