Ok so how many of you got useless degrees?

having said all that, i do sometimes regret that i didnt do cartography, i would like to be making maps right now

The resulting tradeoff is worth its own thread, do you think?

Wow, ILX 2063, we'll all have AIM video chats that only work half the time.

not to mention that Swarthmore students/graduates tend to be insufferably snobby and/or pretentious. dunno about Williams (though i know that George Steinbrenner is an alumnus -- make of that what you will).

my neurotic/snobby Swarthmore educated ex-gf to thread!

Generalizing about people because of what school they went to (state, private or otherwise) = dud.

Counterexample -- Swarthmore alumnus Jake Anderson, Celesteville mainman and Good Guy All -Around, is anything but snobby or pretentious, instead being a warm and good-hearted son of the Midwest. :-)

but I hate those Amherst fux0rz! (kidding again)

damn Berkeley English classes. you know what I meant.

Of course, I went to Bard, so please just stereotype me as a druggie with multiple STDs, thanks!

I already had! and I didn't even know you went to Bard!

actually, i think that yer Donald Fagen!

is there a stereotype associated with Rutgers (my undergrad school)?

Tad, well to my knowledge I've never had an STD, but I did smoke some weed last night, so I guess I do fit the stereotype. *sigh*

"all I know, is that there were rumours, he was into field hockey players"

no, but I knew him. and the Williams alum ex-gf lived in the same co-op with him for a sememster. I remember dancing at a party when suddenly The Naked Guy (TM) jumped into the fray. I quickly jumped out.

and is Otis Wheeler still hanging around ILXOR? he's going to Hampshire College, which is also a hippy/crunchy type of school.

Maria, DON'T WORRY. I did an English/Humanities degree with concentration on both fiction and non-fiction writing. I was making a living off my writing within six months of graduation from the BA - something only six per cent of all writers receiving cash for work ever manage at any time of their lives. But it isn't always easy, especially when you're not on very much money to begin with and publications pay later than you ever imagined they could.

What I do regret is not getting an MA but at the time I wanted to establish a byline/career and was sick to death of sitting in academic surroundings putting plans I'd had since age 14 pretty much on hold.

Also, I too am an English major!

Any stereotypes about Haverford people? Not as well known as Swarthmore but much friendlier to applicants...Haverford and Williams are currently high on my list of schools.

It's interesting how people are generally not bothered by doing something out of their field. It baffles me a little.

Well, think of it this way -- some go to school to learn something specific for a job, others go to school for an experience and find a job later as they do, others mix the two, etc. etc. There's no one 'right' or 'wrong' way about this, what is the perfect path for one person is anathema to others. If I had any general advice, it would be to keep your options open as you consider any sort of advanced education and what you might want to learn from it. As Suzy says, don't worry.

where i did undergrad, they didn't have a pre-law major. they had a "pre-law advisor," who basically just told you to get the best grades you could in whatever you ended up majoring in. and law schools (unofficially) frown on pre-law majors -- which makes sense, because law is a separate field of study in itself and being prepared to do well at law school isn't really that dependent on classes one takes as an undergrad (as opposed to pre-med students, who have to take a certain number of science classes so they have some baseline knowledge before going to med school).

in actuality, a lot of people who end up going to law school end up majoring in political science, philosophy, or history (just my antecdotal experience).

And as others have said upthread, don't worry about making the right choice as to your major being 'useful' - I loved being an English major and what you're being taught is how to use your mind critically, it's just that I had more fun doing that in English than I'd have had in History or Philosophy. I don't know many people who think of their college major as their 'field'

They certainly never landed me any dream jobs.

The only guy i know from Swarthmore is about as nice as you could ask someone to be...

i.e. go to Swarthmore

Looking back on how, as an undergraduate, I went from a practical discipline to an impractical one (journalism to art history), I'm finally forced to admit that subtle peer pressure probably had a great deal to do with it. I was surrounded by literature types and feeling very insecure about my own cultural literacy. When I look back on those days, though, I see that the person I was most sympatico with (and neglected more than I should have, probably because my literati friends didn't like her) was a mixture of analytical and creative and became an architect.

That said, I never once considered English and I think Art History appealed to me because it is actually highly cross-disciplinary. I think it was a way of one-upping the literature types while secretly retaining a fair degree of practicality (you can study all sorts of things under the art history umbrella).

Funny thing is I think theatre has helped me more practically in my career, though having the BS on my resume has probably helped more for getting the jobs in the first place. Nothing I've ever done workwise has been anything that I couldn't have done without the BS though. I mean I've never actually been employed as an engineer. Just web-related computer sciencey stuff.