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What was your college Major?

PoetPhilosopher

PoetPhilosopher

Veteran Member
One thing about me that I did want to express, is that for some reason, I find more interest in taking on Majors that aren't directly what I'm interested in, but that I have some interest in.

For example, @sayak83 appeared to mention AI. This would be right up my alley. However, it just doesn't really appeal to me that much, because I feel it's something I already know how to do or work with. Such a style of thinking as I have expressed in this post, could work to my disadvantage too, though.
 
anna.

anna.

colors your eyes with what's not there
metis said:
Ditto with both of you, but does that put us into the "oddballs" category? :shrug:
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I couldn't be in better company than you and @Orbit, so if that makes us oddballs, I'm game. :D

I loved school so much. I'd always had a bit of wistfulness that I didn't go right out of high school. I loved school when I finally got there. I thought I was going for a degree in English, maybe comparative literature, so had taken quite a lot of classes in that direction. Composition. Mythology. A class that paired a survey course in philosophy with a course focused only on Crime and Punishment, which was really neat.

Then I took psychology 101 as a required elective outside my major and that was the end of that. I was transfixed, energized... just blown away. So then it was social psychology, cultural psychology, prejudice and stereotypes, abnormal, cognitive, biological, neuroscience, neuropsychology, drugs and behavior, stress and ptsd, and so on.

All these still enthrall. Literature, poetry, song lyrics, short stories, written words of all kinds. And then the mind, the brain, the way we think, the way we process, our filters, our human tendencies, in-groups and out-groups, biases, cognitive errors, the way the sympathetic and parasympathetic systems work in us... I could go on but I'll spare you and end it here. :)
 
metis

metis

aged ecumenical anthropologist
anna. said:
I couldn't be in better company than you and @Orbit, so if that makes us oddballs, I'm game. :D

I loved school so much. I'd always had a bit of wistfulness that I didn't go right out of high school. I loved school when I finally got there. I thought I was going for a degree in English, maybe comparative literature, so had taken quite a lot of classes in that direction. Composition. Mythology. A class that paired a survey course in philosophy with a course focused only on Crime and Punishment, which was really neat.

Then I took psychology 101 as a required elective outside my major and that was the end of that. I was transfixed, energized... just blown away. So then it was social psychology, cultural psychology, prejudice and stereotypes, abnormal, cognitive, biological, neuroscience, neuropsychology, drugs and behavior, stress and ptsd, and so on.

All these still enthrall. Literature, poetry, song lyrics, short stories, written words of all kinds. And then the mind, the brain, the way we think, the way we process, our filters, our human tendencies, in-groups and out-groups, biases, cognitive errors, the way the sympathetic and parasympathetic systems work in us... I could go on but I'll spare you and end it here. :)
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I didn't take my first anthro class until being a junior in college, and then I went bonkers on it from then on. It really changes one's look at life, at least imo.
 
anna.

anna.

colors your eyes with what's not there
metis said:
I didn't take my first anthro class until being a junior in college, and then I went bonkers on it from then on. It really changes one's look at life, at least imo.
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There you go. I've gone to some continuing lectures and classes through Osher, so that's provided an outlet. Otherwise I read on my own. I used to write a fair amount, but I lost my muse and haven't written anything in quite a while.
 
lewisnotmiller

lewisnotmiller

Grand Hat
Staff member
Premium Member
Bachelor of Teaching (psych major) and a Bachelor of Education

Graduated with honours from the first, which let me skip some units of the second and teach a subject instead (Language Development)

Once I graduated, I taught for a sum total of 4 years before leaving the industry, and starting in ERP (computer software, basically). Had to start at the bottom there, as I had no relevant qualifications, but my teaching skills helped.
 
JustGeorge

JustGeorge

Imperfect
Staff member
Premium Member
SalixIncendium said:
In scanning through this thread, it would appear that I'm one of the least educated on the forum.
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I got you beat!
SalixIncendium said:
I attended a half of a semester at a community college and dropped out.
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I dropped out of high school, a credit short.

They offered me a shiny scholarship if I'd graduate early due to good grades; I turned it down. I saw no point in pushing to go early, and I had no plans to continue education, anyways. The confused look on the guidance counsellor's face made me smile.

Life happened, and I had to leave, and get a job, and pay bills at 17. No more high school.

In my mid 20s, I thought I was going to move to a large city, so I got my GED. I actually regret that. I wasted my time to get a paper to prove that I knew stuff I already knew I knew to move for a relationship that crashed and burned, and it made me fight with my sister because she babysat my son while I did the GED stuff. She said she was okay doing it, but she wasn't, and we had a really nasty fight and it took me a long time to be comfortable around her again(we're okay now, and get on well).

I do enjoy the lack of student loan debt. And if I want to know something, I just grab a book...

I was told I'd regret choosing not to go to college, but I haven't.
 
Orbit

Orbit

I'm a planet
JustGeorge said:
I got you beat!

I dropped out of high school, a credit short.

They offered me a shiny scholarship if I'd graduate early due to good grades; I turned it down. I saw no point in pushing to go early, and I had no plans to continue education, anyways. The confused look on the guidance counsellor's face made me smile.

Life happened, and I had to leave, and get a job, and pay bills at 17. No more high school.

In my mid 20s, I thought I was going to move to a large city, so I got my GED. I actually regret that. I wasted my time to get a paper to prove that I knew stuff I already knew I knew to move for a relationship that crashed and burned, and it made me fight with my sister because she babysat my son while I did the GED stuff. She said she was okay doing it, but she wasn't, and we had a really nasty fight and it took me a long time to be comfortable around her again(we're okay now, and get on well).

I do enjoy the lack of student loan debt. And if I want to know something, I just grab a book...

I was told I'd regret choosing not to go to college, but I haven't.
Click to expand...

I didn't graduate from high school because I failed P.E. (Physical Education/Gym). I also have a GED, which I got at the end of community college because it was required to transfer to UCLA.

There's nothing wrong with not going to college; if you have no interest in it, there's just no point to it.
 
Yazata

Yazata

Active Member
I did a BA in Philosophy with kind of an emphasis on the philosophy of religion. Then I was accepted into a reasonably well regarded philosophy graduate program here in California.

Despite meeting several well known philosophers, I found myself experiencing financial difficulties and worries about ever finding a tenure-track teaching job. What's more, I'd discovered that I loathed teaching and wasn't very good at it.

At that point I was offered a well-paying job in a sorta-unrelated subject (a law office) with lots of benefits. So I dropped out of graduate school. I worked in the legal field for many years in a variety of capacities. The philosophy major did impress my employers quite a bit and proved to be of some utility when I kind of slid into being an on-the-job trained paralegal.

Eventually I took an early retirement (good pension plan) and started to think about completing the graduate degree that I'd abandoned several decades earlier. So I enrolled in a masters program in interdisciplinary humanities (my interests had broadened over the years) and completed an MA in that. It wasn't a very prestigious program, but I was only doing the masters for personal interest and not for occupational reasons.
 
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beenherebeforeagain

beenherebeforeagain

Rogue Animist
Premium Member
SalixIncendium said:
In scanning through this thread, it would appear that I'm one of the least educated on the forum.

I attended a half of a semester at a community college and dropped out.
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As I've said, higher education isn't for everyone. My late friend Will flunked out of college...but he was one of the smartest and well-read people I've ever known...

And believe me, I've known A LOT of well-educated people who weren't anywhere near as smart or well-read as he was...
 
PoetPhilosopher

PoetPhilosopher

Veteran Member
icehorse said:
I studied Molecular, Cellular, and Development Biology.

Then spent most of my career as a software developer / programmer ;)
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Cool. I feel my specialty in regards to programming is graphics programming - writing shaders, analyzing performance of shaders (which can be important because the codes can sometimes be run every pixel), etc.
 
JustGeorge

JustGeorge

Imperfect
Staff member
Premium Member
Orbit said:
I didn't graduate from high school because I failed P.E. (Physical Education/Gym). I also have a GED, which I got at the end of community college because it was required to transfer to UCLA.
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I think the way they set up PE is dumb, at least it was back in my day. They used to fail kids for not using the locker room... what is the point of that?

I got really lucky because the one year I was in standard school, I had a foot injury and was exempt. After that year I transferred to an alternative school due to anxiety(I needed a smaller setting, was terrified of the crowds), and they actually gave you PE credits for volunteering in the school's daycare.
Orbit said:
There's nothing wrong with not going to college; if you have no interest in it, there's just no point to it.
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I agree. Its an awesome resource if one desires or has a need, but isn't as required as its sometimes made to be.
 
sayak83

sayak83

Veteran Member
Staff member
Premium Member
Snow White said:
One thing about me that I did want to express, is that for some reason, I find more interest in taking on Majors that aren't directly what I'm interested in, but that I have some interest in.

For example, @sayak83 appeared to mention AI. This would be right up my alley. However, it just doesn't really appeal to me that much, because I feel it's something I already know how to do or work with. Such a style of thinking as I have expressed in this post, could work to my disadvantage too, though.
Click to expand...
I understand the attraction to go into things that you find interesting and look at them into more depth. Curiosity and the drive to know more and widen ones horizons is a truly great thing. :)
I was saying more from a career development perspective. There aren't many people around with a good head for both art and hard programming skills...the marriage of the arts with the machine. I do not know at what stage of career you are in...but felt having formal degrees in both could really get you enormous traction.
 
icehorse

icehorse

......unaffiliated...... anti-dogmatist
Premium Member
Snow White said:
Cool. I feel my specialty in regards to programming is graphics programming - writing shaders, analyzing performance of shaders (which can be important because the codes can sometimes be run every pixel), etc.
Click to expand...

I helped found several software companies. In the second to last one, our informal motto was "we specialize in indoor computing" :)

But my "specialty" ended up being complex scheduling systems.
 
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