2008 Woodie Awards
It's Not a Major Issue
Editor's Column
Elias Shakkour
Issue date: 9/22/05 Section: Commentary
"What's your major?" Having barely arrived at Colgate, I was immediately barraged with that question but could never answer it. Hard as I tried to decide on the perfect major for me, I wa¬s always either too overwhelmed by the possibilities or too critical to be satisfied with a suitable major. The fact that everybody around me seemed to treat my choice of a major as the one around which my collegiate career would revolve did not help too much. The importance that was attributed to my major led me to be so consumed by the need to make a decision that I spent many a sleepless night fighting an inward battle through which I struggled to pinpoint the optimal major for me.
But despite the 50+ choices that Colgate offers, I did not seem to be getting any closer to making a decision. Ideally, I would have loved to major in linguistics or multiple languages, but those options were not available. Did I really want to go through the painstaking process of majoring in one language? I wanted the time and the money that I was investing in my Colgate education to be "worthwhile." And my operational definition of worthwhile rested almost exclusively on my choice of concentration.
As my first year progressed, I decided to toy with the idea of a double major in geography and international relations. My rationale? "I should double major because that would maximize the benefits I would gain out of my education. I should not major in a language because I already study languages on my own anyway. I liked geography in high school and international relations sounds formidable." My goal specified (or so I thought), I promptly signed up for a course each in geography and IR.
Fascinated by the idea of study abroad and interested in Colgate's Madrid and Dijon study groups, I also took some requisite French and Spanish courses. Although I thoroughly enjoyed those courses but found my IR course insupportable (the geography course was wonderful), I still insisted on not majoring in a language and figured the IR course was a means to an end. My freshman advisor made it clear to me that my majoring in IR instead of a language would be similar to Richard Feyman's having studied art instead of physics, but I would hear none of it.
But despite the 50+ choices that Colgate offers, I did not seem to be getting any closer to making a decision. Ideally, I would have loved to major in linguistics or multiple languages, but those options were not available. Did I really want to go through the painstaking process of majoring in one language? I wanted the time and the money that I was investing in my Colgate education to be "worthwhile." And my operational definition of worthwhile rested almost exclusively on my choice of concentration.
As my first year progressed, I decided to toy with the idea of a double major in geography and international relations. My rationale? "I should double major because that would maximize the benefits I would gain out of my education. I should not major in a language because I already study languages on my own anyway. I liked geography in high school and international relations sounds formidable." My goal specified (or so I thought), I promptly signed up for a course each in geography and IR.
Fascinated by the idea of study abroad and interested in Colgate's Madrid and Dijon study groups, I also took some requisite French and Spanish courses. Although I thoroughly enjoyed those courses but found my IR course insupportable (the geography course was wonderful), I still insisted on not majoring in a language and figured the IR course was a means to an end. My freshman advisor made it clear to me that my majoring in IR instead of a language would be similar to Richard Feyman's having studied art instead of physics, but I would hear none of it.