It’s always great to catch up with friends and relatives while you’re home from college, to share news about the latest semester, and find out what’s happened in your hometown while you’ve been gone. While the pleasantries can be refreshing, there’s one question that will absolutely come up: “What’s your major?”
And if you have an obscure major or one that’s not widely-understood, then this question will inevitably annoy you because your answer will be followed up with another: “So, what do you want to do with that?
I am one of those people that lives out this scenario multiple times every time I go back home. And it’s annoying every. Single. Time. Don’t get me wrong, I like that people are interested in my academic career, but it’s frustrating to continually be met with dumbfounded looks and speculative judgment when I tell someone what my major is.
My major is titled Economics, Sustainability, and Society. Allow me to explain: basically I study how economics intersects with sustainable, or environmentally-friendly, practices and values. This major seeks to understand how we can improve our economy while simultaneously helping the environment.
Now, most people can understand economics (that’s like, money and math and stuff?). It’s the sustainability part that throws people off, and I don’t blame them. Outside of my own climate-literate circle, sustainability is a seldom-used or understood the term. Sustainability encompasses a lot of different ideas, environmental and otherwise, but for the sake of this article, we’ll keep its definition short: sustainability means maintaining the health of the environment.
Although I find my major perfectly easy to comprehend, it’s difficult to explain to others who don’t value what my major stands for don’t understand the fundamentals of my major. How can I explain why my major matters if I’m speaking to a climate-change denier? How can I explain my major without coming across as pretentious? Because as Van Jones stated, if you try to talk to someone about sustainability, their only take away will be that you went to college.
The thing is that I really want to be able to explain my major to people who think differently than me or who genuinely want to learn more. As climate change becomes a critical issue in politics, economics, and culture, I hope that people will begin to understand why I’ve chosen to study it. As a part of an up-and-coming field, it’s my responsibility, and my pleasure, to relay the message of why caring about climate change is so, so important
So if you have an obscure or seldom-understood major like mine, don’t fret. As long as you find it important and worthwhile, then it doesn’t matter what your second-cousin’s great-aunt thinks of it.