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So you’ve chosen a great college, taken all of your AP exams, and walked across the stage to celebrate the end of your grade school career. All you have left to think about is how you’ll decorate your dorm room and whether you’ll make any friends at orientation, right? Not quite.
Unless you’ve known what you wanted to be since you were in kindergarten (and some people have), then you’re probably wondering what major you should choose. This decision can be almost as difficult for students as deciding which college to attend, and can have just as great an effect on your future. If you choose the wrong major, you may end up wasting a lot of time and money to learn about a subject that will not be relevant to whatever career you ultimately settle upon. Therefore, it is important to know all of your options and make sure that whatever you choose is right for you, or at least that it will give you some flexibility in the future.
One lesser-known and often-overlooked major is Linguistics. “What is linguistics?” you may ask. “Does that mean I have to speak a million languages?” Not at all (although knowing more than one language can never hurt). According to the Linguistic Society of America, Linguistics is the scientific study of language – that’s right, it’s a science. And just like in any other scientific field, linguists develop and test hypotheses, and appeal to statistical analysis, mathematics, and logic to account for the patterns they observe (Macaulay and Syrett, 2017).
Many topics fall under the umbrella of Linguistics: unconscious knowledge that humans have about language, how children acquire language, how languages vary, and how languages influence the way in which we interact with each other and perceive the world. With such variety, it’s no wonder that those who study linguistics can enter a number of different fields after graduation. The analytical reasoning, critical thinking, and argumentation skills that the major cultivates are applicable to a wide range of careers, from teaching, to computer science, to work for government agencies, like the FBI and CIA (that’s right, if you’ve ever wanted to be a spy, this might be the major for you). Many students who are new to the field are surprised to hear that their classmates will go on to become teachers, advertisers, foreign service officers, researchers, programmers, or psychologists, but Linguistics provides the necessary background for all of these diverse careers.
If you’re interested in knowing more about Linguistics, but not ready to commit to the major, why not sign up for an introductory linguistics course? Zachary Thomas, a senior linguistics major at the University of Maryland, didn’t know what he wanted to study when he first started college. Since he did not want to waste time taking major classes before finding his true passion, he decided instead to take classes that would fulfill his General Education requirements. Thomas states, “I didn’t know much about Linguistics when I took LING240 [an introductory linguistics course] as a Gen Ed requirement, but in the class I realized that Linguistics is about more than learning different languages, it’s about the complex ways that human beings communicate with each other” (Thomas, 2017). If, like Thomas, you’re undecided on a major, give linguistics a shot. You never know what you may learn that could change the course of your life.
If you’re already convinced that you want to major in Linguistics, but are worried that your parents won’t be on board, check out my next blog post, How to Convince Your Parents to Let You Study Something You’ll Actually Enjoy.
Works Cited
Macaulay, Monica and Kristen Syrett. “Why Major in Linguistics?” Linguistic Society of America. Linguistic Society of America. 2016. Web. June 2017.
Thomas, Zachary. Personal interview. 11 June. 2017.
Linguistics in College 