Are College Classes Useful In Life?
It's funny when life comes full circle.
When in college "they" make you take a certain number of classes to fill requirements for graduation. Some of those classes are pretty interesting, some are very pointed and direct and will benefit your career, and others are just complete filler. They are those classes you took because they might be fun, or interesting, or a way to round out your schedule so you didn't have Friday classes. But did you EVER think that they'd be.... useful?
College Majors
At Syracuse University as a Speech Communication major in the Visual & Performing Arts college, I needed 120 credits to graduate. Like any good little college bound high school student, I came in with maybe 9 or so AP/Community College credits, so it afforded me the ability to take a few semesters light. After switching majors 3 times in 4 years because I didn't know what I wanted to do, I wound up in a degree that was kind of a jack of all trades mish-mash of stuff that would allow me to graduate on time - PR, Marketing, Public Speaking, Statistics, Rhetorical Thought, Leadership, etc.
Second Thought Classes
I had a lot of options and took classes on nonverbal communication, small group communication, ethics in communication, rhetoric of horror movies, etc. I chose each and every one of them because I thought they were mildly interesting, potentially easy and common sense based, or just fit into my schedule. I had 3 jobs in college, and ran the university wide programming board that was given $250,000 to handle. Academics weren't necessarily my focus at the time - I just wanted easy A's (which I rarely got) from classes that wouldn't take up too much of my time.
Post-Grad Uses
When I graduated I abandoned all of that and went to go work in the Music Industry. Didn't use my major once, and pretty much assumed I never would.
I then went onto teach English in South Korea where I realized that my training in nonverbal communication would come in extremely handy.
And now, as a Community Manager, every single aspect of my major has come rushing back in a waterfall of useful memories. All of those communication classes that I thought were just interesting, have demonstrated themselves to be life savers in assessing a situation and knowing how to handle it in the workplace. Even that awful statistics class has helped me to read analytics a little bit more clearly.
An Investment
It took 6 years for my major to come in handy. At no point did I ever think that I shouldn't have gone to college and gotten a degree (because the network I have from Syracuse has paid for itself time and time again), but it's always nice when you can look back on things you learned years ago and recall them clear as day and apply them to what you're currently doing.
So don't ever write off a class you took as something that wasn't useful, because it is all relative and what you make of it later that counts. And this is coming from a girl who took weight training, yoga, snorkeling, and wine appreciation all in one semester. Even the boring requirements can make you a better conversationalist on a variety of topics.
You'll never be able to predict where you'll be in the future, what could have come in handy, and how something you're doing currently will play into that, but it all adds to your story. And you learned more than you think you did during those filler classes way back when.
When in college "they" make you take a certain number of classes to fill requirements for graduation. Some of those classes are pretty interesting, some are very pointed and direct and will benefit your career, and others are just complete filler. They are those classes you took because they might be fun, or interesting, or a way to round out your schedule so you didn't have Friday classes. But did you EVER think that they'd be.... useful?
College Majors
At Syracuse University as a Speech Communication major in the Visual & Performing Arts college, I needed 120 credits to graduate. Like any good little college bound high school student, I came in with maybe 9 or so AP/Community College credits, so it afforded me the ability to take a few semesters light. After switching majors 3 times in 4 years because I didn't know what I wanted to do, I wound up in a degree that was kind of a jack of all trades mish-mash of stuff that would allow me to graduate on time - PR, Marketing, Public Speaking, Statistics, Rhetorical Thought, Leadership, etc.
Second Thought Classes
I had a lot of options and took classes on nonverbal communication, small group communication, ethics in communication, rhetoric of horror movies, etc. I chose each and every one of them because I thought they were mildly interesting, potentially easy and common sense based, or just fit into my schedule. I had 3 jobs in college, and ran the university wide programming board that was given $250,000 to handle. Academics weren't necessarily my focus at the time - I just wanted easy A's (which I rarely got) from classes that wouldn't take up too much of my time.
Post-Grad Uses
When I graduated I abandoned all of that and went to go work in the Music Industry. Didn't use my major once, and pretty much assumed I never would.
I then went onto teach English in South Korea where I realized that my training in nonverbal communication would come in extremely handy.
And now, as a Community Manager, every single aspect of my major has come rushing back in a waterfall of useful memories. All of those communication classes that I thought were just interesting, have demonstrated themselves to be life savers in assessing a situation and knowing how to handle it in the workplace. Even that awful statistics class has helped me to read analytics a little bit more clearly.
An Investment
It took 6 years for my major to come in handy. At no point did I ever think that I shouldn't have gone to college and gotten a degree (because the network I have from Syracuse has paid for itself time and time again), but it's always nice when you can look back on things you learned years ago and recall them clear as day and apply them to what you're currently doing.
So don't ever write off a class you took as something that wasn't useful, because it is all relative and what you make of it later that counts. And this is coming from a girl who took weight training, yoga, snorkeling, and wine appreciation all in one semester. Even the boring requirements can make you a better conversationalist on a variety of topics.
You'll never be able to predict where you'll be in the future, what could have come in handy, and how something you're doing currently will play into that, but it all adds to your story. And you learned more than you think you did during those filler classes way back when.