Why you shouldn’t worry about your liberal arts degree
You wanted to be a liberal arts major for any number of completely valid reasons. You followed your passions, just as everyone told you to do when you entered college. Whether your interest was British poetry, art history, U.S. foreign policy, or the sociology of village life in the southern Philippines, you pursued it with vigor. You jumped into scholastic endeavors with an enthusiasm that you had never known before, buoyed by a joy to learn that you had never before in school.
But now as your college tenure is coming to a close, you start to panic. You get emails about career opportunity fares meant to help your market your degree to potential employers. You encounter more and more people that scoff at the potential of a liberal arts degree. You hear from friends who majored in chemical engineering or business administration that already have contracts for jobs that pay more money than you’ve ever imagined. You start to worry if you made the right choice in what you studied, and question whether or not you can find a decent job in this still fragile economy.
Sound familiar to you?
You’re not the only one fretting over the value of your liberal arts degree. In fact, the topic has been one that’s dominating publications nationwide as of late. With jobs and the poor economy on the minds of employers and potential employees alike, liberal arts graduates are wondering how to make their case as valuable members of the American workforce.
But I’m here to perpetuate worries over your liberal arts degree. In fact, I believe it’s the key that can unlock so many potential employment opportunities in the future. I think a liberal arts degree is the best degree one can earn for future employment. Its only goal is to be conferred upon a person who has learned how to think individually and how to think well. A liberal arts degree is set apart from other degrees that teach highly specific and specialized skill sets and abilities. A liberal arts degree resists cookie cutter career training by giving students the tools to develop their own professional persona, equipped with a strong sense of analysis and a nuanced view of the human condition.
I mean to say that a person with a liberal arts degree is by no means restricted in their career choices. In fact, they have free reign over what career path suites them best. A person with a liberal arts degree is someone who managed to excel in courses that covered a wide variety of subject matter, from dense histories of foreign countries to careful analyses of Western philosophies. A person with a liberal arts degree has likely read, written, and analyzed more material than a student in any other major. They’re pushed to the limit intellectually and then some, forced to formulate and defend their beliefs to professors and peers alike. They must structure learned arguments that showcase their knowledge on a subject, and they must possess the skill to make the argument cohesive, compelling, and convincing.
In other words, a liberal arts graduate would be the ideal employee in any company.
This guest post is contributed by Angelita Williams, who writes on the topics of online courses. She welcomes your comments at her email Id: angelita.williams7@gmail.com.
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