Being in "Arts and Crafts"

There's a look.  It's less obvious than a smirk, maybe it's more of a knowing smile. 

If you are in Lehigh's College of Arts and Sciences, and especially if you are a liberal arts major, you know this look well.  It usually comes after telling an engineer or business student that yes, you are a Journalism and Political Science major and might be minoring in Art History.  

While Lehigh is technically split pretty evenly between the three undergraduate colleges, we are known as an engineering school.  Our most notable alumni were engineers, like Jesse Reno, who invented the escalator, or Howard McClintic and Charles Marshall, who built the Golden Gate Bridge and Panama Canal. Our business school is also well known and was ranked 31st in the nation in Businessweek last year.  

So where does that leave us Arts and Sciences students?  Continually justifying that even with our significantly less busy class schedules and lighter course work, we are still smart and going to get jobs after graduation.  

This is partly due to the difference in credits for classes across colleges.  The majority of Arts and Sciences classes are 4 credits and meet twice a week for an hour and fifteen minutes.  Business and engineering classes are generally 3 credits and often have lecture 3 times a week plus a recitation.  This, plus three hour 1 credit labs, fills up a schedule pretty fast.  I have friends that are also taking 18 credits next semester, but they have 6 classes whereas I have 4 plus two credits for writing for and having an editor position on the Brown and White, our newspaper.  

My schedule next semester.

This was a phenomenon I was not ready or used to when I came to college.  I grew up in a small town (my graduating class of my public high school had 90 kids) and was known as the smart girl.  I was used to trying to convince people that I was dumber than they thought, but now I find myself convincing classmates that I'm smarter than they think. 

While I definitely could not do the complex calculus or lab work that is required by my classmates (just looking at their web assign homework or lab notebooks makes me anxious), I don't think they could interview someone and be able to write an article about it or write an essay on the changing dynamics in the Roman Senate and how they affected the demise of the empire, as my classes have required of me.  

I've learned to accept the teasing, but it is frustrating when people insinuate that your major is meaningless.  The other day, a friend of mine asked "What are you going to do with that?" when I told her my major.  I think the variety of careers you can have with a liberal arts degree is an asset, not something that undermines its value.  Also, it's not like I'm studying something pointless and twiddling my thumbs all day long.  Just like an accounting major is preparing for their career in accounting, my majors will prepare me to work at a newspaper, at a PR firm, for a government agency, or go to law school. 

I told two of my friends who are also liberal arts majors about my idea for this post earlier today and they had similar feelings.  One of them is a Women's Studies minor and said it's really frustrating when people act like it is pointless to have it as a minor.  

So how should someone respond when given "the look?" My new response is going to be to smile and say "Well someday I am going to be writing about your company's acquisition or your new scientific development so that the world can know about it, so I would say my major is important too."


*to any Lehigh kids reading this (and others too!) have a comment? (or rebuttal?) Comment below! :)