I graduated UMASS Amherst in 2006 with a pretty useless degree. I changed my mind a couple times on what I might want to major in while I was there, and by the time I had to commit to something in order to graduate on time, I was about 3 classes away from finishing a Russian/Eastern European studies with history minor. I studied Russian in high school, and kept taking language classes in college to avoid losing it. Unfortunately, I fucked up and was never really able to picture there being life outside of school, and never came up with anything to do post-college to avoid losing the language. Almost all the Russian dept at Umass retired and weren't replaced (budget cuts), so I had to go over to Amherst College and Smith in Northampton to take some literature and all my language classes. Umass had one guy that taught a couple basic, low level Russian culture and film classes that I took for easy A's a couple semesters, and some Polish history and cold war era history classes, and I believe even my semester of Finnish counted toward the major.
I really didn't like it there. I usually say I really hated college, but the truth is more that I really hated college kids. I fantasized about stabbing anyone in the throat that could say something like, "oh, I can't go out partying tonight, my parents only gave me 2,000 bucks to spend this semester and I've blown through most of it already" around mid-terms. Especially since I overheard most of those conversations while I was at work.
This place, however, is one of my favorite places in the world:
dubious (pun intended) architectural design notwithstanding.
Absolutely love that library.
My biggest problem with school has always been that while I can be a giant nerd, once you give me a book to read and essay topics, I immediately want nothing to do with those subjects. Write a paper on the United Fruit fiasco? Fuck that, I'm going to go read about Stalin's death as reported in the Russian newspapers they have in the library basement on microfilm. There were times where I practically took up residency in the library, including the day and a half I spent there (I left to go get food once, but then came right back) writing a 25 page paper on Sergei Witte and the trans-Siberian railroad, and loved every minute of it. But mostly, I skipped as many classes as I could, and if an attendance component of a class might be the difference between an A and a B, I'd take the B for the course if it meant I'd have to suffer through fewer lectures. I had a painfully dumbed-down biology lecture (biology of cancer and aids, with a textbook featuring cartoon cells and really simplified explanations of genetics that would have insulted me in 6th grade, never mind as a college student) for a basic life science requirement--which I only took because, not being a science major, they wouldn't let me take a real bio 101 course with a lab or anything. I spent quite a bit of the time I should have technically been in cancer and aids class at the library on the floor with all the Sherlock Holmes stuff. And by stuff, I mean a floor to ceiling shelf with books that were compiled critical essays, a bunch of bound periodicals--quarterly publishing, the Baker Street Irregulars, and all kinds of stuff to geek over. Also at the expense of my GPA, I took calc II again after I failed it the first time (and only managed a c+ the second time through. Let's face it, I'm pretty terrible at math), that semester of Finnish, a couple literature classes that were taught entirely in Russian. And since I did make it through calc I with a decent grade (calc I was easy! I still don't understand what happened in II. They took away all the numbers, and I couldn't make any sense of those fucking Greek letters or something. Derivatives made sense. Integrals did not), the chemistry dept let me take the science/engineering major-tailored chemistry courses--if I hadn't been afraid of orgo after the calc II debacle, that was what I was headed towards. Then I thought perhaps linguistics. Liked language classes (Russian obviously, that semester of Finnish was quite difficult but interesting as hell, a couple semesters of Latin was pretty cool), HATED linguistics classes. Actually, I'm not sure I took a single class I hated more than the intro to linguistics classes.
One of the biggest problems I have with academia and the post-high school education system in America is programs that put heavy emphasis on one subject, and produce people who know a great deal about that subject, but only that one subject. English majors who can't even calculate a tip at a restaurant without using their phones. Biology majors who don't know Gorbachev from Pinochet. Several-times-published adjunct professors who are amongst a handful of experts on New England maritime history circa the 1600s, yet can hardly tie their shoes themselves. I tried to put together quite the jack of all trades/master of none undergrad degree (with a pretty heavy emphasis on Soviet Russia, but that turned out to be incidental and just dropped a major incontinently in my lap as I dicked around with fairly basic and intro-level stuff in practically every department other than sociology or psychology), because I'd rather know a little about a lot of different things than only a bunch in one area. It would have been pretty easy to just take non-whatever major classes for the basic requirements you have to meet to graduate and pad my GPA with over-simplified no-math-required astronomy for morons, or the anthropology class that gave us assignments like "learning about chronological order...put the following in chronological order based on invention: typewriter, pencil, computer." But I didn't want to be like the girl who didn't know where Ontario is, or the one trying to do the crossword puzzle who said, "I hate crossword puzzles, I never know any of these things. Who the fuck knows what a bovine is?"
Perhaps this makes me a big proponent of a liberal arts education, however, the flip side of this is that, like I said at the beginning of this wall o' text, I have an entirely useless degree. I never wanted to teach. If I had an office job only vaguely related to the fact that I wrote a lot of papers in college, you'd have seen me on the news by now after I shot up everyone in their cubicles. So the last semester of my senior year of college, I took an EMT class so I'd at least be able to find some manner of a job when I graduated, til I figured out what I wanted to do with myself. Sadly, that was the only class I took in college that was even remotely useful after I graduated. And since EMT around here make only a couple bucks above minimum wage, despite swearing I'd never EVER go back to school for anything, a little while later I went back to school to be a paramedic. Finished that 2 and a half years ago, and still have no idea what I want to do. I don't want to go back to school til I finish paying off my Umass loans, but if I ever do, it will be for something useful. Respiratory therapy, maybe. I don't know. People who argue in favor of liberal arts educations are always pushing the fact that such a degree teaches you how to think. And that's great. But it doesn't really pay the bills. If I were going to go back to school for something I'd probably never use, though, it would be music-related.
