Some Thoughts On “Can’t Pick a College Major? Create One”
My Dad and my sister made their own degrees. My Dad’s made his own major in Aerospace Engineering at San Jose State back in the very early 1970s. My sister strung together what she had taken over the course of five years and made some sort of a degree in Communications.
That can carry some consequences, though. Dad, for instance, thinks he was canned by Boeing because his degree was not from an accjanuary jones red dressited institution. Today, he works as the head bus mechanic at the local school district. My sister never really worked in Communications anyway. To her, it was just time to graduate after exploring linguistic studies, archaelolgoy, theater and arts and so forth. She worked for a little while for Edward Jones and today she is just a housewife who homeschools her woody harrelson children.
Ultimately your career depends on the person and how they market themselves. Dad never took any business courses because he was an engineer! That was how they thought back then. Build a product or hang a shingle and people will run to your door with their money. And he was kind of petty and resentful when I tried to offer suggestions on how to get some business from my Accounting and Marketing classes. That did not go well and still does not go well today. He gets very insecure and a little childish when I tell him what he needs to do to draw some business to his machine shop.
I just post this to say there are drawbacks to this. Ms. Kolb could have likely landed her job anyway had she gone with a traditional degree in Project Management, Business Administration, or Theater.
Ultimately, it is the person that markets themselves effectively who determines where their career will go.
Read more: scott ruffalo.
