I thought I had a pretty good idea of what to expect from my college education.
Well… I knew what I wanted.
I wanted to go to art school. I wanted to create things, I wanted to envelop myself in culture and history. I wanted to learn more about people: why we do what we do, and how we communicate.
But those things would never get me a job. (So I was told.)
So I played it safe, and picked a degree that I knew would guarantee me some kind of career. I had my roadmap, with the socially-acceptable path planned out for me. It started with Point A: Go to school, obtain a degree along the way, and ended at Point B: Get a good job.
My first day on campus, I stepped into the classroom clutching this metaphorical map, this idea that my education was a formula, an input leading to an output.
With this method, I survived my first year of college. I made it on the Dean’s List, I was doing everything right. But when people asked me what I wanted to do when I graduated, I couldn’t answer them. The destination was so far ahead of me on this map that it wasn’t even a concept I could visualize.
But I wasn’t happy.
So I changed my major.
I thought maybe if I submerse myself in my studies, I could jump-start my passion for education again. But really, I was just drowning. My grades plummeted, and for the first time in my academic career, I failed. I blamed the system for letting me down. College was the thing I was told my entire life that I needed. I was conditioned to be good at it, and I failed.
I can tell you firsthand, there is no formula for an instant degree. And even if you follow the “roadmap”, where are you really going?
What are you really learning?
I wanted to expose myself to experiences different from anything I had ever known, and I wanted to use the relationships I formed and the things I learned to grow as an intellectual and an individual.
And I found all of this in CASL.
I am a proud CASL student. I see passion and creativity in my professors, in the research I do, and in the work of my peers. But I also see students who have checked out. I see students who are burned out from defending their academic choices to the students who devalue the humanities.
There are students that breathe business. There are students that live for engineering. And there are students who are just as passionate about the Liberal Arts.
Why are we so afraid to admit that?
There is a stigma around schools like CASL, there is a turned-up nose response for any student who is studying in the humanities.
It’s time we change the narrative.
In closing, I want to dispel a few myths for you:
For anyone who has ever told you that you “can’t get a job,” show them this. We are in an “artisan economy” (like a global Etsy shop). Bloggers, artists, people who see the value in a desk-job, but prefer to be out exploring, are the first in line for jobs like these. Companies are looking for independent, self-sustaining individuals who can think critically and have the social knowledge to communicate with all kinds of people.
For anyone who has ever told you that “the humanities are dead”, show them this. The only time I foresee the humanities dying out is when humans do (and even then, there will be fields dedicated studying our extinct culture). The humanities, like every other field, continue to grow and develop. We are a reflection of our education. We are a group of freethinkers who have never been comfortable standing still, we are always looking for new information, new ideas, and humanities programs are a direct reflection of that.
Reintroduce yourself. You are a CASL student.
You wouldn’t be here if you didn’t thirst for knowledge, if you didn’t hunger for solutions, if you didn’t crave new platforms to express yourself, if you didn’t want to shape your education just as much as you want it to shape you.
Throw out your roadmap. Throw out everything you know about a liberal arts degree.
Pull a Robert Frost and take the road less travelled.
Take control of your education.
Take pride in CASL.
Melissa is a Junior. She is a Communications Major and WGST Minor. She formed this blog with help from CASL Dean Hershock to help CASL students form a community and a collective identity for the college she's proud to call hers.