Does Your Major Matter?

27 January 2005

Now that my bags are packed, am I ready to go?

This is it.  My last day as a student of Luther College.  It hadn't really sunk in until just now... as I was pulling the last pictures off my walls and setting the last frame outside my door.  Seeing the blank walls, I suddenly realized that the last time I had seen a room like this was the day I arrived.  That's what really struck me...

My tomorrow is as bare as the walls on move-in day. 

Where am I going to go?  What am I going to do?  How am I going to put my personality out there and make it uniquely me?

Every year, I've picked up images that speak to me and they became a collage that traveled with me from dorm to dorm.  What will I take with me from Luther?  Some pictures?  A piece of paper?  The amazingly-useless ability to read two dead languages?

Those things may be enough to make a wall mine, but can they make a life?

I don't know.  It seems to me that when I leave Luther, I'm going away from things so much more important.  I'm not going to miss my classes and I can read Greek whenever I want, but I might never have this same chance to be around these same people again.  There are so many I'm going to really miss.

And what about the ones that I already miss?  What happens to the friendships that failed?  Do my empty walls mean those relationships are over?  I hope not.

Maybe we just need to prove we can live in our own separate worlds before we can be a part of someone else's.

That's how I want it to be.  There are so many people I met here that I want to know in five or ten years and I hope that my future gives me that chance.  Making friends hasn't been easy for me and I don't want my departure to be the beginning of the end of all the relationships that I've worked so hard for here.

With luck, tomorrow will instead be the end of a rough beginning and a step towards friendships yet to come.

21 January 2005

Never Go Down So Far That You Can't See Out...

Is it possible that choosing a college major is a lot like digging a hole?  Here at Luther, we don't have to declare our major until December of our junior year.  That gives a lot of time to explore, hop around and generally study all sorts of crazy stuff.  We get used to having all sorts of freedom on registration day.  "Oh, the class on European history is closed?  I'll just take Modern Interpretive Dance instead."

Then when that third December looms on the horizon, we realize that college doesn't last forever and we have to make a decision soon!  I know I certainly didn't plan to major in Classical Languages.  My path went from being an English major to a Communication major to a Business Management major to an Interdisciplinary major, but none of them quite fit me.  Then, I had to make a decision last fall and, surprisingly, I was closer to a major in Greek and Latin than any subject I actually tried to study!  It makes me wonder...

Was my degree a concious decision... or was I so far in over my head that I grabbed onto whatever would get me out first?

                                                                                       Picture from http://timmerca.com/.

20 January 2005

Judgment Day draws near...

I have less than a week left at Luther College and then I'm off to face the real world.  It's a scary thought and I wonder if I'm really prepared for it.  Luther says I'm educated because I know how to read Homeric Greek and Latin... but when am I going to use that again? 

Is this going to be me in 10 years?

I hope not. I've spent an awful amount of time preparing for this launching-off point--16 years of schooling in all--is that all going to go to waste?  My GPA says I'm good at school, but does success in the classroom translate into success in the real world?  Do book smarts count on my resume?

What happens if they don't?

Does that mean I just wasted 85% of my youth on something that will have absolutely no impact on the rest of my life?  That can't be right.  I believe that there must be a real reason for everything I've been through.  Surely my professors weren't joking when they told me that, in order to succeed in life, I needed to wrack my brains writing a 25-page paper on ancient fertility goddesses in Homer's Iliad.  Or were they?