Four years ago, in the summer of 2010, I set foot on campus to enroll in classes as a political science major. I drove home having enrolled in a Bible major’s courses. By November, I was signed up for computer science work in the spring. The following fall I thought business sounded like fun. In the spring of 2012, I became interested in communication, both storytelling and linguistics. At the start of my junior year, four semesters away from graduation, I decided I didn’t want a major, so, of course, I switched to general studies.
At last I had found freedom.
Stereotypically, this was the freedom from difficult coursework. I was the guy who couldn’t finish a degree program, the one who preferred to pick and choose my courses so I wouldn’t have to take classes that sounded unappealing. I was the guy who only needed to take 12 hours a semester to graduate on time and the one who was sure to spend a couple of years in fast food or a warehouse somewhere after graduation.
So I picked classes that sounded interesting, worked at Taco Bell and Burger Studio until I got a job in physical resources driving a forklift and delivering packages, and now I am graduating in a month. That’s the end of my story. I came here, gave the university my money, my parents’ money and the government’s money just to get a degree in nothing.
But the time and money weren’t for naught.
I may not be qualified to take the MCAT, and I’ll never get a job as an accountant, but I can tell you what happens in your brain every time you look at art, and I can trace the origins of political order from prehistory to modernity. I haven’t been within 15 feet of a microscope since high school, but I can scholastically analyze a film’s or novel’s appeals to universal mythos.
General studies provides the opportunity to be a student not only of the humanities and the sciences, but of every field of study. It provides the opportunity to graduate with a degree not in a field, not for a job, but a degree that says, “Hey, I really like to learn, and I’m pretty good at it.” General studies isn’t a cop out; it’s a degree that, according to the catalog, “allows students to build their own program of study plan based on interests that may not be met by any single current major.”
I was told, implicitly and explicitly, from the day I even discussed applying for college, I needed to decide on a major, to have a major by the end of my freshman year, to hold a degree in a field of study and to be prepared to hold a job in that field for the rest of my life. But I came here to learn.
