Stereotypical College Majors

Ok, The UC system (where I work and study) goes back into session next week. As such I thought I'd share some strange things I have noticed in my (admittedly far too long) academic career.

History Majors have a hard time staying on topic. (Tangents are our stock in trade)

Political Science Majors will argue with you about ANYTHING.

Philosophy Majors will also argue with you about anything, the difference is, you won't understand what the hell they're talking about.

You can tell the women who are in the natural sciences (Botany, Geology, Biology, etc...) because they are the ones who regardless of the fashion du jour, always dress for the field, and wear sensible shoes around campus. (which actually makes them more attractive in my book)

Business majors are already convinced that while you will be starving in the street, they will be raking in the dough, and they're not afraid to let you know.

You can tell the pre-med students by their pale complexions (they don't get out of the classroom much)

Feel free to add your own...

Let me expand on one there as a zoology major..You knew who preferred field work to lab work because the field work females..none of them would ever have their fingernails done..Whats the point when you are digging in the dirt all day..:)

It always blows my mind to see the women on campus who cross it every day in stiletto heels. UCR is not a friendly place for doing that (The campus is not flat) and yet I see them every day, It's gotta hurt.

BU got the label of a "Catwalk University" due to the students wearing designer clothing and walking up and down the very long Commonwealth Avenue. The one thing I noticed about walking on the BU campus is even though it looks flat, it's actually on a slight incline so it's harder to walk one way and easier to walk back.

I am a history major and I would have thought history majors have the propensity for quiz shows and games. I had a daily team at the BU Pub quiz every tuesday and have a collection of glasses because we always came first!

Yes, there are exceptions, but not many.

"Engineering majors are the only group on campus that doesn't need access to contraception, their personalities do the job for them." :evilgrin:

Kinda interesting, the engineering building on campus is the least comfortable, least welcoming building we have. It is dark, dank and forbidding.

The building I spent the most time in was Zoology/Psychology..It was quite the maze to navigate..The joke was that us Zoo majors were rats running around in a giant maze for the Psych majors...:)

Though, I'm going into genetic engineering, which is a bit different kettle of fish. :)

or they go on and on about color symbolism in novels that no sane person would ever read or they're frustrated movie critics.

Ed majors use terms like motivational discourse, group dynamics and cut up your food for you.

Psyc and Soc majors always answer any question with "What do you mean by that?"

I married an English major, so I take good advantage of her grammatical skills.

On going too deeply into symbolism, for English majors, stories can never just be stories, this can be a benefit, but at times it just leaves them reading too much into an ultimately simple tale.

out of a story. My favorite: Critiquing the short story "The Lottery", one critic opined that the three legged stool on which the drawing box sat represented the Trinity. The author is on record that she was taking her baby for a stroller ride and the story just popped into her head. She had no intention to write an allegory.

Second favorite: One of my lit profs was going on and on about the deeper significance of some poem and asked the class, "Why did Soandso use the word "Blah" at the end of third stanza?" Class smart ass answers, "Because it rhymed with the last word in the sentence just above it?"

(Dammit, should have majored in women's studies!)

Plenty of time yet, if you feel the need. Lots of Freshmen change their majors.

even for the ones that are straight...

Why is that?

Ironic exemplification of lesbian stereotypes???

oh wait... :blush:

I agree that history majors tend to go off on tangents all the time because that discipline demonstrates how everything is interrelated. It's all about the butterfly effect, and if you're really into the subject, it's impossible not to consider how things would have been different if x, y and z had not happened.

Poli Sci people don't seem to be that argumentative though. I love hashing it out in seminar, but in the real world I got most of the arguing out of my system in high school as the only liberal Jew in my Colorado Springs neighborhood. I tend to ignore the BS a lot more these days for my own peace of mind.

History teaches us how everything is connected, creating a coherent narrative out of that demands tangents.

Most of history seems to consist of "well, it seemed like a good idea at the time."

In that way history reflects life.

...though as a Philo grad myself, I should probably be arguing with you. ;)

I also did a bunch of Visual Arts classes - Fine Arts (Visual) majors are really into mind-altering substances, both legal and illegal.

:beer:

Our final critique in Graphic Arts was the one time I got the drunkest while in college. One guy brought his portable "bar" and when I asked him for a screwdriver, he filled my large plastic cup with basically half orange juice and half vodka. We were all out in the hall later on pulling around a four-wheel handtruck and piling on everything we could find in the hallway, laughing the whole time. Later, I took a "nap" in one of the color darkrooms for about an hour

have a uniform and a style unto themselves: Carharts, ball cap, tight jeans, button-down shirt... they dress like nobody else on campus, and they're proud of that.

This is also somewhat true of environmental science majors, but some of them dress like "normal" students and some non-ES majors dress like ES majors. :shrug:

I've always been fascinated with the massive number of flip-flops on campus. (Yes, It's California I get that part) But the Beach is 50-60 miles away, and frankly, we're in earthquake country, the last thing you want to be wearing when the campus is transformed into a wasteland of broken glass and wreckage is a pair of flip-flops. Oh well, to each their own.

:spray:

(I'll need successful friends from whom to borrow money in the future) ;)

Philosophy: crazy people that worship either Postmodernist nuts or New-Agey Neo-Platonism.

Lingustics: Rant on about how Chomsky is either a genius or a moron.

We historians are apparently not known for our virility!

because I majored in a subject (Political Theory) which had less than 1,000 students nationwide last year and despite sounding like Political Science, the two have virtually fuck-all to do with each other.

I said to my best friend years ago in a similar conversation "What are Political Theory majors known for?"

Answer: "You ask 'What is the meaning of this, how can I exploit it by convincing others that it's a ruling paradigm and will it get me laid?'"

In case anybody was wondering...Political Theory is the study of the state and mechanism of governance as humanities. Political scientists study how the system works, we study why:

"Is the system really working?" (Not usually.)
"If it wasn't, would anybody notice?" (Not usually.)
"What does X (For example: The latest Against Me! album or the paintings of Julien Schnabel or the novels of Chuck Palahniuk) tell us about the current political climate?" (:shrug:)
"Are bondage aficionados more likely to vote for Libertarians?" (Not coincidentally, yes.)

We don't argue anything because we're all curious moral-relativists.

I think I'd actually find that field fascinating.

it was however the wrong choice for a guy who wasn't sure what he wanted to do but thought teaching sounded fun. School administrators look at my transcript or application, assume the two fields are interchangable and mentally categorize me as a social studies or civics teacher...I'm in no way qualified to teach any of those as I have no social science background whatsoever. I gave up applying for teaching positions in private schools ages ago.

English or Art History or Philosophy OTOH...those are things I understand.

we're the laid back social butterflies with jack-of-all-trades knowledge. we also all love to travel and experience new things.

edit: oh, i forgot the bad. we're also the eccentrics festooned in ethnic clothes, music, food, or some other collection. and everyone is our acquaintance, so walking across the quad, or a bar, might end up taking forever.

... will qualify every word they use in a sentence, ask you to define every word you use, and spend most of the conversation saying "Well, that depends on what you mean by _______."

I do that too. My major required a lot of sociology coursework.

I hear ya, because I have exceptionally good hearing that is a product of a particularly good set of genes passed to me by my mother's side of the family who had relatives who fought on both sides in the Civil War, which, as you know, some people call the Second American Revolution due to its association with the argument over slavery which had itself been passed over more than decided during the debate over the Constitution, said Constitution being a product of the Enlightenment, containing passages that are directly attributable to John Locke who himself delivered a tract that promoted the notion of "justifiable slavery," although not the kind of race based slavery that took root in the Southern state of the United States where my grandmother grew up, learning all the customs and peculiar mores of the region while still keeping enough of an open, inquisitive mind so that she was able to entirely reconsider her opinions on race relations by the latter part of her life, a fact which I discovered during a dinner she made for me and a few friends, among them a black man who had Native American ancestry that had at one time made a decent living working a farm where corn was raised, the same strain of corn my grandmother liked to use to make the meal that went into the cornbread we were eating that very night, which happened to coincide with the beginning of the bombing campaign of the first Iraq war, which both my grandmother and my friend opposed and were vocal about, to the point they got into a rousing good discussion about politics that led eventually to a discussion of their ancestry, during which it was discovered the possibility that members of our family had possibly once owned members of his family and that we had both been on the wrong side of a localized battle with yet another line of his family over water rights.

Oh, and blue is my favorite color, which is only relevant because my grandmother's eyes were blue, and my friend had a blue truck, and George Washington once wore blue clothing.

:D

... and it's subject to revision. :-)

:spray::applause:

A professor once told me I wrote some of the longest sentences he'd ever seen ... and that I would fit in well. :)

psychotic or majorly messed-up in one form or another.

The TAs' break room at my college had all four walls stacked floor to ceiling with empty whiskey bottles.

Students of ancient/classical history tend to be a little aloof in my experience. Then again, it may come of having to learn 5-6 languages to master their field, they don't really have time for chit-chat.

My classroom at UW School of Medicine was nicknamed "The Dungeon". Windowless, airless, hopeless. We were sentenced to six hours a day in there listening to lectures. We all got a little pasty after a while...

Music: Party animals and occasional drama queens.
Math/Physics: Timid and uncommunicative.
Elementary Education: Not very intellectual. At all.
English: Intensely and intentionally intellectual.

Just say'n.

any stereotypes about us.

I did, however, in undergrad major in PolySci and Sociology and the characterizations on this thread are spot on. I was aggressively argumentative about the meaning of everything.

All end up as politicians, lobbyists, or talking heads in think-tanks.

Lots of very uptight prissy types (many very arrogant) or flaky party girls/boys who were only interested in having an "easy" major. (back in the day elementary ed was a major that wasn't exactly a cerebral bonanza).

Casting asparagus on our personalities obviating the need for contraceptives. I am retired now, but in the mid 60's our personalities very seldom got the chance to ruin our opportunities. The slide rules hanging from our belts served as a warning beacon that could be seen long before we could say anything.

Besides, as the following joke shows, our priorities were/are different.
An engineer was crossing a road one-day when a frog called out to him and said, "If you kiss me, I'll turn into a beautiful princess".

He bent over, picked up the frog and put it in his pocket. The frog spoke up again and said, "If you kiss me and turn me back into a beautiful princess, I will stay with you for one week."

The engineer took the frog out of his pocket, smiled at it and returned it to the pocket.

The frog then cried out, "If you kiss me and turn me back into a princess, I'll stay with you and do ANYTHING you want."

Again the engineer took the frog out, smiled at it and put it back into his pocket.

Finally, the frog asked, "What is the matter? I've told you I'm a beautiful princess that I'll stay with you for a week and do anything you want. Why won't you kiss me?"

The engineer said, "Look I'm an engineer. I don't have time for a girlfriend, but a talking frog, now that's cool."


As for our social skills, we are sensitive; but, with practicality.
A pastor, a doctor and an engineer were waiting one morning for a particularly slow group of golfers.

The engineer fumed, "What's with these guys? We must have been waiting for 15 minutes!"

The doctor chimed in, "I don't know, but I've never seen such ineptitude!"

The pastor said, "Hey, here comes the greenskeeper. Let's have a word with him."

"Hey George. Say, what's with that group ahead of us? They're rather slow, aren't they?"

The greenskeeper replied, "Oh, yes, that's a group of blind firefighters. They lost their sight saving our clubhouse from a fire last year, so we always let them play for free anytime."

The group was silent for a moment.

The pastor said, "That's so sad. I think I will say a special prayer for them tonight."

The doctor said, "Good idea. And I'm going to contact my ophthalmologist buddy and see if there's anything he can do for them."

The engineer said, "Why can't these guys play at night?"


:bounce:

In grad school, I had a good friend who was a history major. We used to each dinner with the grad business students from a prestigious school. He pointed out to me that they would meet someone, ask what they were studying, and then instantly decide whether they could advance their career. If the person answered that they were an art history major, the business major would turn their backs and look for someone else to talk to.

size 2 hat.