Whenever I tell people I’m a Communication major, I always get one of two reactions. The normal reaction, usually by other art majors, which consists of “oh, cool, do you like it?” The second, and more common reaction, is a look. The look that says from just knowing my major they suddenly get me. Then some of the nicer people even straight up say, “Oh yeah, that’s like the easiest major at UMass right?”
Until I took a class with Sut Jhally, I completely agreed with them.
I used to think that Communication was the easiest major too. It’s not like math or science where you have to know formulas and numbers. In general, I find a lot of it’s simply common sense. It opens your mind, but work wise it wasn’t too bad. It wasn’t until a class on gender that I realized that communication isn’t the easiest major. In fact, when I break it down, communication can be really difficult at times.
I’m not denying that we don’t have as much actual paperwork. But communication involves opening your mind in ways that can be extremely difficult. We’re not learning how the human body moves, or how to build computers and speakers. We are, however, learning how to change the world’s thinking; how underlying messages in commercials and ads affect the human race; how things that seem so natural like gender or sexual orientation are actually not natural at all. How society makes things that way. We may not be learning how to design and build a skyscraper, but we are learning how to change the way we and the people around us think. We have to go into all of our classes with an open mind, which sometimes (for me at least) is harder than math.
So go on, COMM majors. Strut your stuff and ignore the people who call it the easier major. And if you’re not a Communication major and you’re reading this rolling your eyes, go take a class with Sut Jhally. He’ll change your mind.
Besides, with technology taking over, being able to communicate properly has never been more important.