Respect others’ majors

Remember that old saying: “Don’t judge a book by its cover until you’ve walked a mile in their shoes?” Wait, I don’t think that’s quite right...but it’s close enough.

Every day we see people, and we judge them. Sure, we may not mean to do it, but we do. But what’s really inconsiderate and rude of people to do is to talk down to another student about what they’re majoring in.

I hear it all the time, people saying that their major is more difficult than any other major, or majoring in so-and-so is easy or a joke. No, just stop it right there. One, it’s incredibly pompous for a person to say that their major is much harder than all the other majors; and two: it’s insensitive, condescending and arrogant for someone to imply that a different major is easy and a waste of time.

There is no “easy” major and there is no “extremely hard, final boss, level 99” major either. Hopefully you’re majoring in something you’re good at and enjoy, so then it’ll be a little easier on you.

Really, if you ever think a certain major isn’t hard, please, by all means, take a few courses.  By saying that another major is easy or that you have the hardest major, not only are you giving yourself and your own major a bad name, you’ve also just made a lot of enemies. 

Oh, and of course there are also the people who say: “Yeah, well journalism isn’t a real major,” or something like that. Well, excuse me if you’re just not good at it. Just because it’s something you don’t like, doesn’t mean it’s easy. Get over yourself.

Then there’s always those lists posted online of “the top 10 majors to avoid” or “the top 15 useless majors” that people read. Do you know how many people actually get jobs in what they’ve majored in?

You can use your degree for a lot of different things. James Franco has a Ph.D from Yale, Brooke Shields earned a bachelor’s degree in French Literature from Princeton, the late Steve Jobs dropped out of college. I’m not saying that we’ll all become rich and famous or that we should drop out of college; I’m saying that in retrospect, do our majors even matter?

Also, what’s the point of arguing whose major is harder than the other? Really, we’re all just trying to prove that we’re better than the other person by saying that our major is harder than theirs (which isn’t true).

I’m just tired of hearing it, tired of hearing people being so disrespectful and having the audacity to say that majoring in something is easy and a waste of time. It’s a waste of breath, time and brain cells to say or think things like that. 

You don’t know that major or the people majoring in whatever you’re calling “easy,” so don’t think you know about how the classes are. Get off your high horse, come back to reality and accept that all majors are difficult in their own way. 

Emily Jensen is a public relations major and is a staff writer for The Pine Log.