I have yet to meet the opinion in the wild that the humanities are better or more worthy of study than STEM, and I’m skeptical that a degree in, say, entomology has anything like the market of a science like physics. (That said, from some cursory checks I’m surprised at the level to which a non-applied math degree seems to affect one’s career, although I’m suspicious that the STEM label lets it get lumped in during analyses with potentially higher earners like statistics, physics and engineering.) And my courses were largely on subjects like web design, running radio stations and using AV equipment, which I wouldn’t put under the same heading as studying history or literature in any case.
More to the point, though, would this line of thinking have saved me my present headache? I knew at the time that STEM was more marketable, of course, but I still underestimated how little my own degree would do for me—I assumed that I would do something in an office setting and be a writer at night. I can’t even chock it up to the degree itself being terrible or just a big counter-signal for the eccentric elite, because plenty of my classmates went on to at least have decent desk-jobs.
Despite all of that, though, if I’d really believed that mathematics or engineering was the only path and that my stalling at precalculus level would simply have to be overcome—that it was this or nothing, in a nutshell—then I think I would’ve chosen a better direction.
I have yet to meet the opinion in the wild that the humanities are better or more worthy of study than STEM, and I’m skeptical that a degree in, say, entomology has anything like the market of a science like physics. (That said, from some cursory checks I’m surprised at the level to which a non-applied math degree seems to affect one’s career, although I’m suspicious that the STEM label lets it get lumped in during analyses with potentially higher earners like statistics, physics and engineering.) And my courses were largely on subjects like web design, running radio stations and using AV equipment, which I wouldn’t put under the same heading as studying history or literature in any case.
More to the point, though, would this line of thinking have saved me my present headache? I knew at the time that STEM was more marketable, of course, but I still underestimated how little my own degree would do for me—I assumed that I would do something in an office setting and be a writer at night. I can’t even chock it up to the degree itself being terrible or just a big counter-signal for the eccentric elite, because plenty of my classmates went on to at least have decent desk-jobs.
Despite all of that, though, if I’d really believed that mathematics or engineering was the only path and that my stalling at precalculus level would simply have to be overcome—that it was this or nothing, in a nutshell—then I think I would’ve chosen a better direction.