An Eloquent Defense of Majoring in Liberal Arts

Furrah Qureshi is just a freshman at Drexel University. Yet she has written a fantastic article for the campus paper The Triangle discussing the career merits of a major in, say, English. When I was a freshman, I can assure you I did not have the conviction that she has. And yet, it turns out that she is very, very right. Majoring in a liberal arts subject does not set you up to starve. Liberal arts is good preparation for many "stable" careers that will keep your parents from hyperventilating.

I will go a step further and say that if your heart is in the liberal arts but you study engineering to make your parents happy, you're not going to be as happy as you could be. Many people start out in a lucrative field and discover down the road that they would rather be doing something more artistic (remember the Monty Python sketch in which the accountant wants to be a lion tamer?). But by this point, it's often difficult to switch fields without taking a huge pay cut. Some people just can't get their heads wrapped around this concept and end up staying.

Publishing can be a great bridge job. Say you've studied biology and now you want to be an editor. You've got a leg up on jobs with science and medical publishers. Still, you'll need to have evidence of your writing and editing skills and some sort of related experience (non-paid is OK).