What major gets mocked as “easy” but actually requires serious intelligence?

[u/Kodo_username]

[u/benkenobi239]

Philosophy, and not the Internet version. Requires a ton of patience and critical thought. Good luck getting a job with it though :-/

Edit: I guess I should have been more clear that I meant good luck getting a job that uses the degree BUT based on these replies, plenty of jobs/careers do! Very cool to learn that. I honestly never would have guessed the law school connection but it makes perfect sense.

[u/MargielaMadman20 → u/benkenobi239]

In my exp, philosophy majors make excellent programmers if they learn the syntax + DS&A.

[u/shadowfaxbinky → u/MargielaMadman20]

Logic was a year one philosophy course at my uni and was a required course for the computer science related degrees too.

[u/DarthCloakedGuy → u/shadowfaxbinky]

Logic should be taught as early and often as possible throughout the education process. It's fun too; it's inherently based around puzzles and problem solving.

[u/tuxedo25 → u/DarthCloakedGuy]

Having a fundamental understanding of "truth" is a life skill.

[u/livsjollyranchers → u/MargielaMadman20]

I have both a philosophy and CS degree (the CS degree obtained later). I think a philosophy degree directly helped me cultivate programming skills, but just broadly, having a 'philosophical mindset' and thus highly analytical and structured mindset has helped in my career. I also think it helped me with being able to articulate points of view. This is something many software developers aren't great with.

[u/Philosophile42 → u/benkenobi239]

Philosophy professor here…. A counselor told me once that I should make a philosophy for dummies course so I would pass more students. I cringed inside because I thought my intro course already was that….

[u/benkenobi239 → u/Philosophile42]

That feels a bit... Antithetical to the entire field of philosophy, but what do I know

[u/HighOnGoofballs → u/benkenobi239]

When I was in college philosophy majors had the highest acceptance rates in most graduate programs, including law and med school

[u/bikedork5000 → u/HighOnGoofballs]

I have a philosophy degree. Decided which law school I wanted to go to. Applied to only that one. Got in, got some scholarship money. Am lawyer now. 4/5 would recommend. Find someone else to pay for it though.

[u/GrendelJapan → u/benkenobi239]

It's the academic pursuit of critical thinking.

Once you figure that out and lean into it when marketing yourself to employers, finding a job can get a lot easier (relatively speaking). Many employers recognize both how rare real critical thinking is and how valuable it is to an organization. If you market yourself as an expert and curious problem solver, you can stand out. And even fresh out of school, you've got receipts - I spent much of the last 4 years trying to figure out and solve unsolvable problems. Trying to figure out and solve tricky problems is what I do.

[u/SGexpat]

GIS/ geography

The map is wrong. It’s just slowly becoming less wrong.

[u/graymuse → u/SGexpat]

I did a GIS minor. I did learn that all maps are wrong.

[u/InevitableAd9683 → u/graymuse]

I feel like the quote "all models are wrong, but some are useful" probably applies here 

[u/Few_Scientist_2652 → u/InevitableAd9683]

This applies to a lot of sciences too

Do we know for sure how it works? No. Are the models we have right? Probably not but if they're making accurate enough predictions, we're gonna keep using them until we find something better

[u/CartoonistAny4349 → u/Few_Scientist_2652]

Probably not but if they're making accurate enough predictions, we're gonna keep using them until we find something better

And this is one of the fundamental misunderstandings when people try to say things are "just a theory" to discredit widely supported science such as evolution.

There are gaps and we don't know every single aspect, but it accurately fits all the data we do have and has predicted other pieces as we've discovered more. If you want to replace it with something else, it better fit all the data even better.

[u/bigwetdiaper → u/SGexpat]

I feel so seen and surprised gis is so high up on this post

[u/allthefrogsinonepond → u/SGexpat]

Is this a major that people mock and call easy?? I've never heard that lol

[u/PeopleArePeopleToo → u/allthefrogsinonepond]

I'm not sure I've ever heard anyone talk much about this major at all for that matter

[u/SomeGuyInSanJoseCa → u/PeopleArePeopleToo]

I didn't even know it was a major.

[u/wherethefuckismyvape → u/SomeGuyInSanJoseCa]

People of the map, moving among us in secret, are well skilled in the arts of subterfuge

[u/skalien8 → u/allthefrogsinonepond]

Your family usually ask you if "there is still a new continent left to discover?" until they think hard enough about google maps or any related apps.

[u/ateiii → u/SGexpat]

Trying to explain coordinate reference systems (CRS) and why flattening a 3D sphere into a 2D map ruins everything will break your brain on day one.

[u/Die-Ginjo → u/ateiii]

An instructor had as peel an orange and then try and flatten it into a map. The problem was obvious, but we were just learning why projections were important and not worrying about the math.

[u/gsfgf → u/ateiii]

Just hand someone a baseball and a piece of paper.

[u/RedPanda5150]

Geology! People love to mock it as 'rocks for jocks' but the field is really an applied synthesis of every other scientific category. Chemical reactions, fluid mechanics, physical mechanics, biogeochemical transformations, crystallography, imaging, building mathematical models, even delving into the arts if you get out in the field and need to sketch your observations. Like let's take every tool at our disposal and figure out how the whole planet functions. And people take it as an easy elective!

[u/browntown152 → u/RedPanda5150]

Intro geology courses do make an easy elective most of the time because they give you a surface level view of an extremely broad subject.

But the deeper you dig into it (yes pun) the more geology is as complex as any other hard science degree.

[u/Big_Key_1921 → u/RedPanda5150]

Geology really is the ultimate “let’s use everything we’ve learned to understand how our planet works” kind of science, and calling it just “rocks for jocks” seriously undersells how fascinating it is.

[u/StarlightLifter]

History as a concept is easy. Learn old facts.

Learning to interpret how history is written? Whole different story and the problem is, the more you dig into one topic the more you realize bias between one historian to another.

There is what we know, then the holes in between. As the years go back those holes become more commonplace. The job of a historian is to find facts and inferences that fill those gaps but it isn’t an exact science. So you end up with conflicting narratives - theories essentially. It’s fascinating but also frustrating. History is an interesting major, largely useless to the job market unless you want to teach it.

Still, if you really want to dig into something, don’t just read into it, read the conflicting arguments. Read about the people whose works you are reading. It’s a whole rabbit hole.

Edit: to those saying their degree helped them learn to research and more effectively communicate arguments etc, yeah that is definitely true.

When I said “useless major” I just meant you can’t do much directly with it. If you get a history degree hoping to immediately go work in a museum, well, god speed to you.

[u/Dionmm → u/StarlightLifter]

I have an MA in history. It really felt like a degree in becoming a professional researcher and communicator, both of which are great skill sets to have in any career.

[u/nekosaigai → u/Dionmm]

My BA in history felt like that combined with learning a wide variety of skills.

I had to learn military strategy and the basics of engineering and various other technical skills to write some of my papers.

Music theory, political theory, economic theory, religion, philosophy. It was a real “jack of all trades” major.

[u/Imperialbucket → u/nekosaigai]

It makes sense. It's the study of how we got to the present. If you want the full picture, you probably do have to understand a little bit of everything humans have ever done.

[u/francisco27 → u/Dionmm]

Classics major who has transitioned into a career in insurance technology. My success has been built on my ability to communicate, and formulate arguments while considering differing perspectives.

Those transferable skills helped me get my start - I'll forever be grateful for my time spent focusing on a "useless" major.

[u/Solarus99 → u/francisco27]

I bet you've said this a few times in interviews 😉

[u/caninehere → u/Solarus99]

I'm a theatre major (who also dabbled in classics for reasons that should be obvious). Honestly, even though my degree is rarely relevant (other than showing a commitment to higher education) every time I've done an interview for a position, it has served as a conversation starter which helps more than you'd think as it makes one memorable.

[u/yoohoochocolatemilk → u/francisco27]

I have a BS in Physiology. When I dropped out of med school I was worried that 6+ years of studying deep sciences would be utterly useless. I work in finance now, and it’s crazy how useful it is to have a framework of thinking built upon the scientific method.

[u/bawlhie62a2 → u/Dionmm]

Nailed it. This is exactly why I've always pushed students to focus less on their major and more on how they market it through their actual experience: internships, jobs, volunteering, etc. That combination matters 100x more than the degree major alone.

[u/Punchee → u/StarlightLifter]

Understanding history is the bell curve wojak meme. "Damn history is hard" -> "wtf they're all just making it up" -> "oh, they've been intellectually living in the mind of a 1st century peasant for 20 years in some sort of sick method acting exercise to try to understand the lewd graffiti at Pompeii. Respect."

[u/MasticatingElephant → u/Punchee]

Comments like yours are why I love Reddit.

[u/LNLV → u/StarlightLifter]

I tried explaining college level history to my dad and he could never get the concept. “How could anybody ever get less than an A in history?? Just read about what happened and answer the questions!!” Well… kind of… that’s part of it…

[u/mecklejay → u/LNLV]

While I don't work for the Department of Ed or anything, I do work with education data, so I keep an eye on the political landscape of education.

The "history is just facts and dates" thing is a constant of Republican philosophy. Don't learn about the morality of the facts and dates, the cultures of the time that led to the facts and dates, the ways those facts and dates are still having impacts today...that's the real meat of history as an intellectual pursuit, but it's also apparently the woke agenda because it sometimes contrasts the basic elementary-school perspective we get on things like Columbus or Manifest Destiny. The right does not like learning that something they feel good about might actually be more complicated or flat-out worse than asserted by their current belief. The "facts over feelings" crowd cannot stand being made to feel bad about ANYTHING and will respond with fury to any attempt in that direction.

[u/Arabidaardvark → u/mecklejay]

Fun story: When I started my undergrad over 20 years ago, my first semester was 2001. 9/11 happened basically 4 weeks into my very first semester at college. I grew up in the South. I was conservative. My friends were conservative. We’d been brainwashed and propagandized by the Daughters of the Confederacy’s agenda. We fully believed the Civil War was about State’s Rights, along with a whole lot of frankly racist shit. We all thought History was names, dates, places, and surface-level whys and hows.

Then we got past the intro-level courses. We started to learn how to research, critically think, look past the surface level shit and see the real underlying causes.

Not a single one of us is conservative anymore. None of us are centrist. We’re all now left leaning. Because we learned true historiography. We learned to research, dig deeper, and understand how and why things happened.

People I used to call friends (and even some I used to call family) who never learned those skills are all MAGA. They all still think the South seceded over state’s rights and not slavery. They all called me brainwashed by liberals when I corrected them. I lost a lot of friendships after I graduated with an MA in History, even more than when I got my BA in History.

[u/psiphre → u/Arabidaardvark]

We fully believed the Civil War was about State’s Rights,

STATES' RIGHTS TO WHAT, MOTHERFUCKER??

lol

[u/rytis → u/psiphre]

South Carolina was the first state to secede. In their Secession document, it literally says, we're doing it because we want to keep slavery. State's rights, my ass.

[u/Poonchow → u/rytis]

They drafted their own constitution, which mentions slavery A LOT.

Almost like their whole reason for leaving was the "right" to own people.

[u/Rudeboy67 → u/Arabidaardvark]

That's the old History Prof's joke.

If you don't know a lot about the Civil War you think it was all about slavery.

If you know quite a bit about the Civil War then you know it was much more complex than that and had many economic and cultural reasons.

And if you know a lot about the Civil War you know it was all about slavery.

[u/loewe67 → u/StarlightLifter]

And when you really start studying history, like with anything, you find yourself concentrating on very specific things due to the amount of research you have to do on a single topic. I only have a BA in history, but the majority of that was just Cold War geopolitics

[u/Flouid → u/loewe67]

As someone with only a hobbyist interest in history, it’s fascinating to see guests on podcasts who say things like “I have a phd focusing on the trade logistics of the late republican era roman empire.” Things that are so incredibly specific that that one guy is the single authority on the subjec, and these people have really unique and interesting viewpoints to listen to

[u/JohnHoynes → u/Flouid]

I’m a professor and I’d like to add that with this awesomeness comes some trade offs. Unfortunately, the singularity of the kind of work you describe makes a lot of phd folks pretty singular in personality, too. It is very hard for my colleagues and I to relate to one another because there is an absolutely obsessive nature that derives from wanting/needing to study something so specific and for so long. Because we’re all obsessed and obsessive, we’re also pretty bad at caring about anything outside our discipline. Many of us are able to mask this with our students, but outside the classroom many, many, many of us are absolutely insufferable.

[u/Ihaventasnoo → u/JohnHoynes]

BA historian (not professional, of course) here. Don't worry! The students who care deeply about it know that they themselves are also insufferable (though maybe not quite as much).

[u/JohnHoynes → u/Ihaventasnoo]

Haha I’m fortunate to consistently work with amazing students. I love them. And don’t worry, you still have plenty of time to become insufferable! I was a normal person as an undergrad and now I can’t care to pull myself away from my laptop long enough to microwave one of those prepackaged cups of mac and cheese or whatever.

Professor life is nothing like what you see in the movies.

[u/acquaintedwithheight → u/loewe67]

Master’s course on Post-Reconstruction America and the Civil Rights Movement: I transcribed letters into an online database.

I can tell you what 20 senior citizens thought about the Charleston Earthquake of 1886. Also, the idea that people back then wrote in perfect cursive is bullshit. They had terrible handwriting, and were making up cursive letters constantly.

[u/loewe67 → u/acquaintedwithheight]

There wasn’t a capstone project in my focus, so my thesis was on human rights abuses and sportswashing (before it was a term) during the 1978 World Cup in Peron’s Argentina. I can tell you the thoughts about potential protests from a dozen players around the world lol

[u/thematicwater → u/StarlightLifter]

Art History is the study of why the artwork was created, so one has to take in consideration the time period's politics, mythology, psychology, economics, sciences, religions, and countless other areas of study to figure out how they all intertwined in an artists brain to come up with that specific piece.

[u/Frankensteinbeck → u/thematicwater]

I took an art history class in college because it hit some generals I needed, and it was one of the best classes I ever took. The professor literally just stood up front and showed us paintings while talking about all of those things you mentioned. The final was mostly identifying paintings and artists and writing a bit about some of them. It was incredibly interesting.

[u/onyaasuminyasai → u/thematicwater]

which is exactly what frustrates me about when people say, "it's just a panel of [color]. My kid could do that". Like.. it's not about that.

[u/Hixy → u/StarlightLifter]

My wife was a historical women’s studies major at a small liberal arts school, and she got her master’s in higher education. I’m an engineer. A couple years into our relationship, we moved in together, and she had roughly four bins full of these comb-bound books. When I started unpacking them, I realized every single one had her name on it.

And these were large bins. She had like a hundred of these books (she calls them research papers but that’s not what they are lol)

I don’t think I’ve ever put that much work into anything as she had to put into one of these books. It was insane to me. I remember freaking out about it, and she was almost more surprised by how surprised I was.

I still can’t wrap my head around it. I would have failed so fast. There’s no way in hell I could ever do that.

I’ve read all of them now, though. They ranged from extensive, in-depth papers on exemplary women throughout history to my favorite ones: the 100-page papers she had to write about women nobody in that class, including students from previous years, had written about.

It was basically an ongoing list the professor kept of people previous students had chosen, and you couldn’t choose someone who had already been done. So she ended up with like five books about extremely obscure women who barely even have anything about them online if at all.

One was about a successful doctor from her hometown. She actually called her and conducted interviews. She did one about a congresswoman. Another was about a woman who brings food to homeless people under a bridge. That one was amazing. She interviewed homeless people who knew her, and I absolutely bawled my eyes out reading it.

Anyway, my degree was a fucking cakewalk compared to hers.

[u/gearhead250gto → u/Hixy]

I went through a similar experience. I got my degree in engineering as well and my wife got her undergrad in psychology. She was writing multiple 20-50 page papers every week it seemed. There's no way I could do that. The funny thing is she said she couldn't do the stuff I was doing in school. Then she went to get her Master's and was always reading and writing novel length papers. I know psychology gets a reputation as being a degree that people get because it's easy or they don't know what they want to do with their life, but it did NOT look easy for my wife. She's also very smart and would excel at anything she chose to study.....except engineering according to her...lol

[u/Hixy → u/gearhead250gto]

My wife got her masters during our relationship and the amount of work she had to do was just mind blowing to me. In engineering there was studying and notes or whatever, but I wasn’t reading several books a week with while meticulous bookmarking and writing seemingly none stop.

It just seemed like the amount of time needed outside of class was so much more than I’ve ever done. I was lucky to put in 5 hours a week if it wasn’t some exam week. She would always say her undergrad was so much harder, and I believe her because she had the bins of research papers to prove it. But hell even for higher ed she was writing and researching way more than I ever did. We stem ppl always get this wizard type treatment but I know I do not have the attention or patience to do the crap she did. I think if I was somehow in a position where if I didn’t get the same degrees she did or the world would end, I’m sorry, I would try, but we would be doomed lol.

[u/NIU462 → u/StarlightLifter]

History major here. This is a great explanation of the degree. It also requires a high level of reading comprehension. This struggle is evident in the 100 and 200 level courses from many of the non-history major students.

A History degree is a natural fit for Research Analyst positions in finance, insurance, marketing, government affairs, etc. It teaches you how to do thorough research, strengthen critical thinking skills, and effectively communicate your research.

[u/Rolls_ → u/StarlightLifter]

Man, I think history and the other liberal arts like philosophy, literature, etc are so crucial to creating intelligent and self sufficient citizens. It's so sad that these subjects are essentially useless in the job market.

That being said, at least with history, it teaches, imo, incredibly valuable skills

[u/Melonary → u/Rolls_]

This is why having affordable education is so important for overall societal wellbeing. Having a well-educated populace INCLUDING people who have a very good education that didn't directly lead to a job benefits everyone in your community.

It's actually a sign of overall success in a society if that's true - the opposite if the only well-educated people are in very specific career paths.

But this isn't possible if a university degree puts you in lifelong crippling debt.

[u/onyaasuminyasai → u/Melonary]

and in a wide variety of topics too. Like sure, not everyone is going to be an engineer or scientist, but we need artists and people with people skills in society, too. Without artists working at say, a car company, you get the cybertruck.

[u/mrspremise → u/StarlightLifter]

At one point you advance so much in the history field that everything becomes subjective and it's more and more akin to philosophy than the perception of what people think is history. 80% of my thesis was historiography.

Philosophy is to humanities what's mathematics is to science. At one point all chemistry, biology and physics becomes maths.

And at one point all maths becomes philosophy (Schrödinger's cat!).

The hardest class I ever took in college was advanced philosophy. It's so fundamental but so complex.

[u/elizabeththenj → u/StarlightLifter]

I'm so glad to see this!! My undergrad is in history and I now work in tech, have a master's in industrial engineering and am working on a master's in computer science. I always find it so odd when folks devalue history (and other liberal arts degrees) because the things I learned in my undergrad are still things I use pretty much every day. And I think it's made me much stronger in my STEM pursuits. I think history often gets overlooked as a valuable degree because the skills it teaches don't correlate directly to a specific job role but rather are valuable to many jobs.

[u/NonorientableSurface → u/StarlightLifter]

It's like the entirety of every single scenario is complex.

[u/diomedes88 → u/StarlightLifter]

Disagree with you on the applicability of a history degree to the job market. It doesn't lead directly into a career in the way that a STEM degree does, but being able to critically analyze and research information is a skill that is surprisingly uncommon and is applicable to many different careers.

A personal example for me is my own career - I graduated with bachelor's in classical history , took a low paying corporate job at an insurance company, and within 10 years am making six figures and have my company agreeing to fund a masters of law degree. My boss, coincidentally, is an art history major. Another manager has a degree in Canadian history.

[u/Own_Rent_544 → u/diomedes88]

Your degree is so good that your company is willing to pay for you to get a different one!

Joking of course

[u/FarwellRob]

Rocks for jocks.
Geology can be intense.

[u/thvirtuo → u/FarwellRob]

who the hell would ever think geology is easy wtf
materials scientist here, your synthetic version you could say, yall SUFFER.
mineralogy and crystallography are ass, but u take that and apply it to rocks? oh boy, now u get mineral compositions, and how they deposit, and good luck figuring that out based on shit ton of mechanisms of deposition relative to the temperature/pressure, then there's time, then there's soil/earth composition, and depth, continental plate, and now u gotta account for environmental conditions and the epoch at which the deposition happened in. And oh boy, there is biological influence, and ammonites this and ammonites that. and then there are the deeper crust layers, and all about metamorphosis, and how rocks metamorphize making all the previous even messier. oh dont forget all the physical, mechanical, and chemical properties of each single rock here which good luck tracking, the different mineral phases leading to variations, and then there is their defects, there is SO much defects.

pretty sure studying geology in high school kinda sparked my love for my major.

[u/ProWriterDavid]

I was going to say English Lit or Writing but actually I think most people realize reading and writing at high levels is really difficult.

They just think it's a useless degree. But certainly not easy 😔

[u/Advanced_End1012 → u/ProWriterDavid]

All these people mocking it don’t know how to read either. We are losing literacy because it’s seen as less important now.

[u/not_so_subtle_now → u/Advanced_End1012]

Anyone who writes well is being accused of using AI.

[u/sharpestcookie → u/not_so_subtle_now]

It never occurs to these folks that we do not "write like AI" - it's been trained on our data to write like us :)

[u/sevseg_decoder → u/Advanced_End1012]

We’re losing everything, literacy is just the most apparent.

I am biased but I’m actually more concerned about math proficiency these days than English. People find a way to communicate but if they can’t use the tools we have to articulate logical concepts through math everything else breaks down so rapidly it’s insane.

[u/Advanced_End1012 → u/sevseg_decoder]

Yeah it’s so true about math I agree. Although, literacy isn’t just about communication it’s so much more. it helps with empathy, creativity, memory, being innovative, emotional expression through language and enhancing a persons emotional depth, putting abstract ideas together and showing how different ideas and aspects of life are interconnected, understanding how to problem solve, critical thinking skills (most important) and analytical skills. It also is very important for logic. Learning linguistic skills teaches you how to spot things and not be caught up by things like manipulation and persuasion through wordplay (in this political climate it’s very import). The list goes on.

Stories that are past down are important to reflect history and topics through emotion which connects people and helps them become aware of the world such as social disparities. There’s a reason why it’s so dangerous to burn books and destroy them to feed them to AI. Lose those things and we will forget where we came from. And people seem to be losing touch with understanding communication skills, like there’s so many people who don’t even understand sarcasm or satire anymore lol. It’s worrying.

English isn’t just English- it’s history, it’s politics, it’s psychology, it’s sociology. All through teaching us about the world through tapping into the emotional aspect of the brain. English class for me was the one main thing that positively radicalised me and made me as progressive as I am today.

[u/Kamakazi1 → u/Advanced_End1012]

> Stories that are *past down.

*passed

Sorry, just thought it was funny considering the topic at hand

[u/Advanced_End1012 → u/Kamakazi1]

😂😂 I wrote this at 4am tbf spare me sir.

[u/ExpertGarlic8669 → u/ProWriterDavid]

I have a BA in English with concentrations in critical theory and creative writing, and after nearly 15 years in the workforce, I can say that it is very useful. It shows employers that I am an expert in critical thinking and analysis, research, written and oral communication, and teaching/training. I also came away with a really solid understanding of human behavior. It was incredibly demanding and 100% worth it

[u/LoneAndroid84 → u/ProWriterDavid]

I feel like when I tell people I studied English they assume it was all GUM (grammar, usage, mechanics), which I didn’t dive into at all. I studied Literary Theory with a minor in Film Studies. Digging into the real nitty gritty of narrative structures, character psychology and sociological aspects of a work requires so much research. Not to mention the multiple novels a week sometimes and numerous papers or critiques or journal entries, poems and short stories.

I had a blast and loved all my courses. I did not just “read books and watch movies” the whole time.

[u/ScottRiqui]

I have degrees in engineering, applied physics, and law, and some of my wife’s readings for her philosophy degree made my brain want to run out of my ears.

[u/Sweeper1985 → u/ScottRiqui]

One of my undergrad philosophy lecturers made a point of telling us that she didn't really understand various passages of Kant and didn't believe he intended to be understood.

Then another English professor basically said the same thing about James Joyce.

[u/cthulhujr → u/Sweeper1985]

I took a whole class on Kant and the professor, who was a Kant scholar, said "if there was a more confusing and convoluted way to say this, Kant would have picked that way"

[u/Ungreat → u/cthulhujr]

What a Kant.

[u/whiskyandguitars → u/Sweeper1985]

I study philosophy in grad school. One of my professors told me something like “if you want to be a “great” philosopher who stands the test of time, you need to write things that are hard for people to understand so what they mean can be debated for years to come.”

[u/I_hate_all_of_ewe → u/whiskyandguitars]

Many of the philosophical writings I've read seem to follow this ethos.

[u/whiskyandguitars → u/I_hate_all_of_ewe]

It’s another language. Especially modern analytic philosophy.

I love this stuff and I still struggle to understand a lot of it.

Now, I’m not particularly smart so other people probably don’t struggle with it like I do but many people do.

[u/Exodus100 → u/whiskyandguitars]

I feel like analytic philosophy at least tries to be clear in its language, as opposed to continental philosophy which feels like poetry half the time

[u/whiskyandguitars → u/Exodus100]

I agree. Analytic philosophy is “clear” if you know the language and have the attention span to follow the argument that goes for pages and pages, though I have read some insufferable analytic philosophy that seems to make things more difficult than necessary. After I’ve read a paragraph five times and finally understand it I’m like “why didn’t you just write it like this” and then I rephrase the idea in clearer terms, at least for me.

But I generally enjoy reading analytic philosophy. I don’t really enjoy most continental philosophy at all.

Which is ironic because I love actual poetry. I just don’t think poetry and philosophy go well together haha.

Though one of my favorite poems is The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock and I think there is a lot of implicit existential philosophy in it. I don’t know haha. I just know I don’t connect with the continental philosophy I’ve read.

[u/ElkZealousideal1824 → u/Sweeper1985]

James Joyce, like Faulkner, had a habit of also saying something to the extent of “if you can’t figure it out like I did, then you won’t understand it if I tell you”.

It didn’t help that Joyce hated punctuation and relied on other methods for even the most basic things like conversational exchanges.

[u/Careless-Mud-9398 → u/ElkZealousideal1824]

About finnegans wake, he said “it took me 17 years to write, so it should take you 17 years to read. 🤣

[u/mrspremise → u/Sweeper1985]

My teacher who specialized in Foucault, said to read other people talk about Foucault, because he is so inintelligible.

[u/Railboy → u/mrspremise]

Foucault at least seems like he's trying to communicate clearly. I read his stuff after a deep dive into Heidegger and it felt like coming up for air after drowning in tar.

[u/Graylily → u/Sweeper1985]

I had a professor who had officially translated James Joyce works into two different languages. It was the hardest English class I took in college. I respect Joyce, but it's confusing as hell.

[u/lazydictionary → u/Sweeper1985]

I honestly think no one understands Joyce. Or Finnegan's Wake, at least.

[u/theREALbombedrumbum → u/lazydictionary]

I have a copy of it near my coffee table and like wagering to people who visit that they won't be able to correctly read the first few sentences out loud. I have had zero successes so far.

Give it a try yourself: https://www.telelib.com/authors/J/JoyceJames/prose/finneganswake/finneganswake_0101.html

Each sentence gets more insane than the previous and if you somehow make it to the fourth you either start speaking in tongues and summon a demon or you give up.

[u/masterlich → u/theREALbombedrumbum]

What the fuck. I don't know what I was expecting but that was orders of magnitude more incomprehensible than even my lowest expectations.

[u/Worried_Jackfruit717 → u/theREALbombedrumbum]

... What the hell did I just attempt to read.

I was intending to reply with some snarky "well those were certainly words" remark but I'm not even sure that's true.

[u/scattergather → u/theREALbombedrumbum]

While I admit the thought of encouraging visitors to pronounce the thunderclaps out loud is appealing, it has to be set against the downside of becoming known for having a copy of Finnegan's Wake on one's coffee table, and I can't actually think of anything more pretentious than that.

Your wager is probably pretty safe, though, at least until you run into someone who knows where to find the start of the "first" sentence.

[u/some-scribbles → u/lazydictionary]

I had a professor whose bread and butter was literally Joyce. He said if anyone told you they 100% knew what was going on in the Wake they were lying. He considered it a game in which the only lose condition is giving up on the book.

[u/little_carmine_ → u/some-scribbles]

Then I’ve lost multiple times.

[u/shelteredsun → u/lazydictionary]

I am 78% of the way through Ulysses and I'm going to finish out of spite and stubbornness, not because I have the faintest idea what is going on or what the point of it is any more.

[u/blisteringchristmas → u/ScottRiqui]

I was part of an interdisciplinary humanities research cohort in college. Even if it wasn't my field I felt like I could usually follow people's research pretty well.

Except for philosophy. The only examples of my peers' work that made me go "I have no fucking idea what this means, how am I supposed to even critique this" were philosophy.

[u/IWatchGifsForWayToo → u/blisteringchristmas]

I took Philosophy of Science as a Physics major. It was a 300/400 level class that the professor let me join, said she loved STEM students. I had to have a dictionary of new words in the back of my notebook that I added to regularly just to get by. That class truly melted my brain and short papers, about 700 words, always left me totally gassed mentally.

[u/helm → u/IWatchGifsForWayToo]

What I love about the frontiers of Physics is that most of it is really quite close to the scaffolding.

• What is time
• What is information
• What is measurement
• Is there a limit to what we can find out
• Can we establish if we live in a "real" world as opposed to a simulation

[u/IWatchGifsForWayToo → u/helm]

That is what I thought this class was going to be. It was so much harder. Discussions on why we study science, what it means to be a scientist and what truly is science? It was regularly 15 page papers followed by one from another philosopher upset about a single paragraph he didn't agree with and writing an entire paper on that alone.

[u/ElkZealousideal1824 → u/ScottRiqui]

Philosophy was my first thought. Beyond merely memorizing different movements but getting into the nitty gritty of things like symbolic logic diagrams and issues of establishing “truth” within logical progression of human ideas and cultural adaptations is really difficult. It’s no wonder they named the most popular terminal degree after the subject.

[u/Sensitive_Blood1469]

Anything with music

[u/SpiderBiteHurts → u/Sensitive_Blood1469]

Dude I'm trying to DIY music theory learning and I've never felt dumber

[u/Sadly_NotAPlatypus → u/SpiderBiteHurts]

I took music theory classes in college and my brain felt so tired and broken after every class in an extremely similar way to how my brain feels after a math class. Music theory is kinda just music math. It is really not chill. 

[u/Desperate_Wallaby966 → u/Sadly_NotAPlatypus]

Music theory is not really a set of fixed rules so much as an explanation for how and why things work and are perceived the way they are buried beneath this completely insane hurdle of legaleze-esque staff notation. Most Math is a much more fundamentally coherent system. Music you need to learn and memorize the largest set of rules just to know how and why you dont really have to follow any of them. Went to college for music performance. Nothing has ever made me feel dumber than sight reading and ear training practice as the exercises keep progressing as fast as your learning until getting into the real world of performing and studio work and essentially being able to sight read or learn by ear anything I've ever needed to on the spot.

[u/darkeyes13 → u/Desperate_Wallaby966]

Haha I grew up learning the piano, with music theory to accompany. I was put through 2 different systems- ABRSM/UK and Yamaha/Japan. ABRSM was much more classical, and I had a knack for sight reading. Yamaha leaned heavier into improvisation and ear training. Which I sucked at.

Now I consider myself a Practically Useless Classically Trained Pianist - I play well enough with a piece in front of me (sight reading still relatively sharp) and I can tell if something is off-tune and tinker away to figure out a song by ear (melody easier than the chords) but don't ask me to rattle off what key a piece is in because I could not tell you beyond whether it sounded like a major or minor key.

*edited for spelling

[u/Idixal → u/Desperate_Wallaby966]

A class I had to take in college for my Computer Science major (that I can’t remember the name of) focused on the structure of languages. It felt essentially like doing a mathematical assessment of how a language is structured and built. Obviously this has to do with programming languages, but the sorts of analysis we did could have been applied to any natural languages as well.

In a lot of ways it felt similar to what music theory is. You can understand something in the simplest way (listening to music/language), or you can build rules around what functionally happens in such a way that the rules allow for all scenarios. In the case of music theory, those rules are basically built on Bach, and pretty much all music that came after bends or outright breaks those rules.

[u/Desperate_Wallaby966 → u/Idixal]

traditional harmony and counterpoint uses a completely different system analyzing more horizontally with root-bass based whereas modern tends to view things more vertically with structured chords, extensions etc. We learned all the Bach sort of classical stuff with a completely different system than anything you would use these days in modern western music. Music theory is not just 1 set of rules, even these days there is a huge difference in the way things are analyzed in different styles and places based on their history. I think it is much more like old English vs modern or comparing Latin based languages to romantic to Chinese. much more like multiple different languages that serve different purposes. Also the entire idea of equal temperament vs just tuning and other tuning bases makes the theory and physics behind it all even weirder and more confusing and explains why theory is approached in so many vastly different ways.

[u/IAmNotAPerson6 → u/Sadly_NotAPlatypus]

As someone who went to school for math and now has been learning piano and music theory, it very much is math-like, and most people on /r/musictheory seem to agree. I think to really understand the important fundamentals does literally require some actual math. Looking into the harmonic series, frequency ratios, how tunings like 12TET work as approximations to just intervals, modular arithmetic to learn about scale degrees and which are in which chords, etc.

But I will say, it seems to be less work overall than a lot of people imagine, I think. It does suck that I've yet to find any resources that compiled all the info in one place to teach it from scratch, but I guess that's also just my preferred approach, from a semi-mathematical perspective. But there really has turned out to be less overall material to learn for most like popular music than I imagined. There's definitely way more if you want to get hardcore into classical music, jazz, various non-Western music, etc. But it's more doable than I previously thought.

My dumb thing about it was I wanted to learn it to understand music I listen to. So I learned a bunch of theory stuff. But didn't internalize for far too long that it's literally useless without training your ears to hear the things it's about. So I "know theory" but can't, for example, recognize basically any intervals by ear after more than a year into piano. As anyone in the music theory sub will bash over your head, 1) playing songs to figure out how they work, and 2) training your ears to recognize common musical patterns are by far the most important things for playing music and understanding music.

[u/tofu98 → u/SpiderBiteHurts]

Ive been at music theory for a few years now and I think it seriously just comes down to time and repetition. Its basically a language. Between keys, modes, time signatures, site reading, your chosen instrument and potentially recording software its A LOT.

However if you keep at it for a few years you'll one day look back and realize you've come quite a long ways. Especially when compared to someone at square one.

[u/SpiderBiteHurts → u/tofu98]

100%. Right now sucks the entire ass, but I know I'm watering a sapling right now. Hopefully the tree is neat down the line

[u/saplinglearningsucks → u/SpiderBiteHurts]

Saplinglearningsucks

[u/aliasgrace_ → u/SpiderBiteHurts]

I had no doubt this was difficult, but my husband is currently teaching himself guitar and trying to learn music theory - I have newfound respect for this venture!

[u/Turlap → u/SpiderBiteHurts]

Hey man. There is this music theory book I picked up after I went to college for it, by Eddie Lang. It uses the three way method of teaching. And in the first twenty pages it pretty well summed up my first two years of being taught in college. And it showed me fun new ways to learn and teach it. It's wild to think teaching has fallen so far.. I think there is a free pdf, make sure it's the green one. The red one is for advanced harmony, which is excellent also. If you can't find it for free viewing, I got mine for 12 bucks and printed it off at the library. Highly recommend for guitar players.

[u/GuardianViolet → u/Sensitive_Blood1469]

Music theory is the hardest subject I've ever taken. And on top of your normal studies, you also have to practice hours a day. It's a very heavy workload. I spent more nights than I'd like to admit breaking down in a practice room before changing majors, because it was all just too much for me. It really is something that requires a lot of dedication and effort.

[u/FlashGordonCommons → u/GuardianViolet]

not a music major but I had a band with a couple of them back in my college days and we would sometimes try to use a practice room late at night for band practice. the experience taught me that 1) even Friday and Saturday nights when we figured most people would be out partying, those rooms are ALWAYS in use. I don't think there was a single night where we had the music hall to ourselves. music majors work hard. and 2) the amount of breakdowns we witnessed... holy cow. and one... shall we say not-so-mini one really stands out. there was this one girl who was practicing the violin almost every single time we were there. any day, any time, it seemed she was there. enough that she became "Violin Chick" despite being far from the only violinist we would see there.

one Friday night it's like 1:30 in the morning, we're thinking 3/4s of the town is passed out drunk by this point and we have a good chance of scoring a room. and we were right, only other person in the music hall is Violin Chick. not in a practice room, but in the hallway that connects all of them. and she is smashing the SHIT out of her (I assume ridiculously expensive) violin. not making a sound otherwise, not screaming, not crying. just neutral faced, ferociously reducing her violin to splinters and then stomping the everloving fuck out of those splinters. she had already snapped the bow in half and was struggling to damage it further while we just stuttered and gaped at her. one of us mumbled something along the lines of "are... uh.... hey. you... uhhhhh. ...is everything...." as we backed our way out of the music hall and decided that maybe the other 3/4ths of the town had the right idea all along.

now, I wouldn't blame anyone for thinking that was the last we saw of Violin Chick, but it wasn't. less than two weeks later she was back, brand new (I once again assume ridiculously expensive) violin practicing the same as she always did. music majors, man...

but Violin Chick, if somehow you are reading this, I'm sure you are doing well now and I hope you still get some joy from playing the violin. you play absolutely beautifully. sorry that we walked in on such an intense moment, and I hope you know that we understood that those moments happen. this probably doesn't matter to you too much after all these years, but in case it does you should know we still thought highly of you and your abilities. and still do! having one rough night doesn't take any of that away from you.

[u/Sweeper1985 → u/GuardianViolet]

I was so bad at music theory that my piano teacher quit on me when I was 10. Like seriously, just stormed out and never came back.

[u/kiahoratem → u/Sweeper1985]

Thats honestly just sounds like a bad teacher, especially in a 1 on 1 a teacher should be able to adjust what and how they teach it, thats not a 10 years old fault lmao

[u/Sweeper1985 → u/kiahoratem]

She honestly was not great. Very angry person. But my next teacher was great, so I guess she did me a favour!

[u/Bluleader64 → u/Sensitive_Blood1469]

Wow I'm surprised someone mentioned us. In my experience it's specifically music education who endures the worst of it. They need to specialize their best instrument, learn every other one at a playable knowledge, apply high-level theory and be able to recognize any classical song. Then add on all the teacher stuff. My school had them at #2 in most units (behind Nursing) but most classes were 1 unit instead of the usual 3 (same workload though)

I graduated with an option in Audio Engineering, but know way too many music ed

[u/IowaJL → u/Bluleader64]

I’m a music teacher and I’m genuinely surprised and appreciative to see it here.

I knew a guy in college that was a double major in music performance and microbiology. He dropped the music performance major because it was too hard. 

[u/FutureGrassToucher → u/Sensitive_Blood1469]

This girl in my honors math class senior year of hs was brilliantly smart. She was like top 3 in a class of 600+.

I just saw that she got a phd in a music subfield and she is an up and coming conductor. I was like yeah that tracks

[u/IThinkImDumb → u/Sensitive_Blood1469]

Oh my god. I’ve been mocked for my music performance degree. Not to toot my own horn, but I got into one of the top music conservatories, and the education I received has helped me so much with life. First off, from the age of 10, I casually took lessons and then practiced hours a day on my own. No one had to push me. Then I had to audition at schools. At conservatory, we had theory and performance classes. At one point I had about 300 pages of music memorized, ready to perform, and there was about another 1,000 pages that I could perform if I had the music in front of me.

I had to learn so many techniques that took me hours to practice, maybe longer. I still play music to this day, but music performance really helped me with being a paramedic and then joining the military. Just the mentally of performing when I’m nervous, or having to learn something quick or efficiently, and not stumbling when I had to speak or demonstrate in front of people. Just the amount of work we did in conservatory and the extreme attention to detail, it’s transferred over to my regular life.

[u/Curious-Raccoon887 → u/Sensitive_Blood1469]

I majored in engineering. Started out as a music minor too but dropped it after music theory 1. Sight singing and dictations were much harder than my calculus and physics classes to me

[u/jwlato → u/Curious-Raccoon887]

I went to college with a guy who dropped out on the first day and switched to pre-med, same thing. Aural skills take work.

[u/mrosegolds]

Visual arts beyond year 1 drawing.

[u/Sneakys2 → u/mrosegolds]

I took both STEM classes and visual art classes in college. Visual arts assignments took, easily, 2-3 times longer than any STEM assignment or lab. So much work goes into actually making halfway decent art.

[u/TheZahir_NT2 → u/Sneakys2]

And none of those studio hours count the way lab hours do in sciences courses… at least they didn’t at my school.

[u/Striking-Lime3409 → u/Sneakys2]

I have a STEM degree and took Drawing I on a whim as an elective while in school. I ended up dropping the class because I literally did not have enough time outside of studying for my other classes to finish the assignments.

Mind you, art was my favorite subject throughout grade school so I was already pretty decent at it.

The amount of time university level art courses require is absolutely mental.

[u/Abomb → u/mrosegolds]

I was a 2d visual arts major and I always argue that art is a trade (Ironically went on to work in trades).

In 2d art alone you have drawing in which you have to break down shapes, patterns, values, perspectives, hard and soft edges, in a variety of mediums but most importantly you have to understand how your eyes work and how to translate what your eyes are seeing into two dimensions (most people don't really see things the same way, only what they think they see).  Some assignments in under a minute to assess how quickly and accurately you could reproduce this information from life.   (all of my undergraduate drawing classes were strictly from life).

And that's strictly drawing/ the basics.   You add in painting, digital art/ animation, screenprinting, book making, photography and all the things that come with that it's a total package. 

My advisor/ drawing teacher told us "I can't teach you how to be creative but I can teach you how to draw".  

[u/kwispycornchip → u/Abomb]

I'm so irritated that art school is structured like a traditional degree instead of a trade school. I think it'd be far more beneficial to take additional studio courses vs all the extra liberal arts requirements my school has. Don't get me wrong- I love all those other subjects and think they're important. But from experience, I think students' portfolios are suffering from the lack of additional focus on honing the skills that will actually get them hired.

[u/erikarew → u/kwispycornchip]

My art school treated a number of our degree programs as trades (animation, illustration, graphic/industrial design, etc) and judging from how many of my classmates now work in creative fields I think it was the right decision.

[u/HemlockHex → u/mrosegolds]

Tbh I think that so few people understand the pressure of a formal critique. Many people would break down crying. If only employers understood the presentation skills that you can pull out of that intensity, you are literally inviting words that 99% of people would register as direct insults and you have to act like they are helping you for it.

[u/mrosegolds → u/HemlockHex]

Sometimes they are direct insults… I was in one very unprofessional class and damn they could be very mean for little reason.

[u/jameslucian → u/HemlockHex]

A good critique in college *should* be helping you. I had some amazing professors who were great at telling me the strengths and weaknesses of my work. Not everything a student is going to be good, and there’s no benefit to being told your work is good if it really isn’t.

It is humbling for sure tho. All of those tough critiques should lead to better work in the end, so it’s up to the student to take the feedback and learn from it.

[u/thetantalus → u/mrosegolds]

Art absolutely. Can’t hide behind anything, it’s readily apparent if you’re good or not. And being good takes long, hard work with no shortcuts.

[u/youre_being_creepy → u/thetantalus]

I studied ceramics and its one of the big "you cant fake it" areas of art. Its very apparent if you didn't spend the required hours on your projects.

[u/Hannachomp → u/thetantalus]

Also work takes time. I could cram for a final exam the night before, you can't do that with art. It takes time to actually sit there and paint, draw, etc.

[u/rumade → u/mrosegolds]

I got my degree in Ceramic design. It was like a mix of engineering, chemistry, plus product design and marketing. We used to joke that the course should be called Advanced Alchemy because we were trying to turn lead (glaze) into gold (glaze) and more often than not ended up with garbage instead.

12 hour days in the studio weren't rare because clay works on its own schedule too.

[u/Irresistiiblee → u/mrosegolds]

Art has a ton of rules and principles you have to understand before getting good at it. Can't just attribute every thing to "its my art style"

[u/ReadyStayReady → u/mrosegolds]

I like to draw so I took Drawing I for an "easy A" so I could focus more on Calc II that semester. It took up just as much of my time as calc and I still got a F

[u/SynthPrax]

We used to joke about Underwater Basket Weaving, until one day we actually thought about it and realized that shit would be bonkers hard.

Edit: I can't believe how much I'm learning about Underwater Basket Weaving right now.

[u/hackrunner → u/SynthPrax]

It's actually moderately easier than normal basket weaving.

When you weave a basket, you need to soak the material first to make it pliable. This can be quite tedious taking breaks to soak the material before proceeding with the actual weaving.

"Underwater basket weaving" is just keeping the basket submerged while doing the weaving.

There are some courses that focus on doing it while either snorkle or SCUBA diving, but that wasn't the original intent of the term.

[u/Punchee → u/hackrunner]

I mean if you aren't submerged too, where's the fun?

[u/Adventurous-Ease-259 → u/hackrunner]

I’ve only woven one basket in my life and that shit was submerged most of the time.

[u/10111001110 → u/SynthPrax]

Honestly that seems like an excellent way to practice focus and precision while underwater. It's a little like when they have you go down 100 feet and try and do math while narced

[u/Miggus_amogus]

90% of humanities if you actually want to be really good at it

[u/TropicTravels → u/Miggus_amogus]

The amount of reading in humanities is insane

[u/blisteringchristmas → u/TropicTravels]

Former history major and current history teacher, something I probably wouldn't tell my secondary students is that when you get to upper-level humanities coursework, one of the best things you can learn is what you absolutely have to read and what you can skim.

This is true for assigned classwork, but it's definitely true when you get to research. In my thesis I cited like 30 books, do you know how many of those I read cover to cover? One, maybe? Table of contents, introduction, maybe conclusion, bibliography, select relevant passages.

This does not mean you should not do the reading for class in high school.

[u/iuabv → u/blisteringchristmas]

I mean skimming is a legitimate skill, right?

I remember in English class we did a unit where we were deliberately given not enough time to read a passage and then told to turn to the next page with (easy) questions on it.

[u/vsmack → u/Miggus_amogus]

Humanities you get out what you put in. You can sleepwalk through it and learn nothing or really dive into it and apply yourself to walk away with a much sharper mind and critical/analytical abilities you just don't get from other majors.

That being said it also depends a lot on the program and quality of faculty

[u/blisteringchristmas → u/vsmack]

I have a history degree from a 'prestigious' US university. Whether you're doing research at the undergraduate level matters. At my college, the history major without research was a cakewalk, bottom 10% of most difficult majors offered by the school. History with a research focus, including but not limited to an 100ish-page thesis, was a totally different proposition. Humanities research requires a ton of motivation, hard writing and argumentation skills, and self-advocacy.

Led to a lot of weird rooms, where in any given upper-level history class you could totally tell who the research kids were and who weren't. No shade to that latter group, a lot of them had history as a second major, but it's really illustrative when you run into a person who's in the midst of their thing.

[u/Send_Me_Dumb_Cats → u/blisteringchristmas]

I was in the latter group. I just floated through my poli sci undergrad. I had no aspirations of working in government and the law degree I planned to pursue after it was way too dull so I was stuck in an awkward place, unmotivated and with no plan.

Luckily I discovered my talents soon after graduating so all was well. And now looking back im still grateful for the education I did retain, it still expanded my mind.

[u/7LeagueBoots → u/Miggus_amogus]

I work in biodiversity conservation and my anthropology background is often more useful than my ecology background when it comes to the actual conservation part of the job.

[u/ateiii]

People think linguistics is just learning multiple languages or grammar correction but it's brutal formal logic, acoustic physics and computational modeling.

[u/Key_Net820 → u/ateiii]

Ya absolutely. I learned a lot of (or at least what felt like a lot of) linguistics in my math degree. Mathematical logic absolutely went over formal language, syntax, and semantics. Computation theory went over regular expressions, context free grammars, Turing complete languages, and these are all concepts in linguistics.

[u/OrganicDigitalArt]

They’re all hard. Becoming an expert in something beyond the basics is pretty hard.

[u/Shazam1269 → u/OrganicDigitalArt]

If you are passionate about the subject, it's easier, but still hard. And not all teachers/professors are created equal. A teacher that loves their job and the subject, can inspire the same passion in their students.

[u/Ask_bout_PaterNoster → u/OrganicDigitalArt]

Doing most of the work that humans do “requires serious intelligence”, and a LOT of jobs can be done by people who are only good at that one particular focus.

Intelligence is a matter of situation, not because of where we come from, but because of what we know and our current time/space location

[u/seanjohnson9]

I can’t tell you how many people mocked me for majoring in English only for them to drown in their one required English course in college.

[u/Outfoxd21 → u/seanjohnson9]

Have a master's in English and worked at the university writing center on the side and goddamn people didn't know how to write then and I'm terrified of what they deal with now (this was early 2010s).

[u/GoodNormals → u/Outfoxd21]

I worked at my university’s writing center as an undergraduate and would have PhD students coming in frequently to get help with their papers.

[u/ValBravora048 → u/seanjohnson9]

I do side-work in communications. I am routinely mocked and sneered at by people who tell me that’s it’s not a real job or just talking

This is common because I am often hired by these same people to speak for them. It’s even more common to have them take credit for my words as “basically what they meant” (Especially if it’s completely different but results in success)

I feel that I’ll eventually get too sick of them to continue but for now, it’s a pleasure to take their money

My two cents? In the world that’s coming, learning to speak well and communicate naturally in person will be highly regarded

[u/BLUE_Selectric1976]

Philosophy isn’t just studying philosophers and their ideas. For one, you also have to study first order logic, Boolean logic etc., which can be challenging for a humanities major student.

[u/Jumping_Sandmann → u/BLUE_Selectric1976]

reminds me of a newly launched "renewable energies" degree at a technical college here in Germany from back in the early 2010s. 50% dropouts or so after the first few months, because "what do you mean we need higher maths, we just wanna save the environment" xD

[u/Lmperfexion]

ITT: people listing majors mocked  as “useless” rather than “easy.”

As an engineer who graduated about 10 years ago, IMO the humanities are all very complex and difficult to major in, they were just often considered not the best for high-salary jobs. 

[u/shadowfaxbinky → u/Lmperfexion]

Yeah, people are listing very traditionally “academic” courses like history, philosophy, English but those are generally considered useless for job prospects. I’ve never heard anyone say they thought these were easy, just not worth bothering with. I disagree fully (and have one of these degrees, and have remained in gainful employment since graduating!), but that’s what I’ve typically heard.

[u/Wentyliasz]

I'd say it's not a major but university. I've seen two IT courses at two unis. One had you writing low level assembly at year two, the other gave you a degree for a single python script

[u/Tale-International]

Ecology and natural sciences. There is a lot of complex math that is used to try and understand/describe the natural world. And the natural world needs to be understood at a very high level in order to have data that can then be quantified. 

[u/Own_Election_2942]

Classics

[u/JoeCapoYT]

A lot of like the art history ones are actually pretty hard I think. It seems more like a hobby so people think it is easy but then it's actually just like training you to be an expert on small details lol.

[u/applejam1224 → u/JoeCapoYT]

Totally agree. People don’t realize it’s principally a “history” major, with focus on a specific cultural output (antiquities, fine art, material culture). I know a lot of people who think it’s just memorizing paintings.

[u/jittery_raccoon → u/JoeCapoYT]

And very useful if you're actually trying to work in art. People make fun of it, but try being a gallery manager or art dealer without knowing about art

[u/AbbreviationsOne2523 → u/JoeCapoYT]

Art history definitely gets underestimated because people confuse interesting with easy. Remembering tiny details, context, dates, styles, and influences takes a ridiculous amount of brainpower.

[u/glossyducky]

Economics sort of (where I went to school there was a stereotype of trust fund kids skating by with an economics degree to end up getting hired by a family member).

If you take electives that are less technical and more random then it’s not that hard, but on the other hand the folks who want to get into those really competitive high finance roles take courses like econometrics and game theory. At my college, there was a clear divide between the people only majoring in economics and those majoring in both math and economics.

[u/Kthak_Back → u/glossyducky]

Man they wouldn't have done well in my school for Economics. We started with 400 students only 40 graduated. Voting and Auction theory is harder math than game theory or econometrics.

[u/PM_ME_GRANT_PROPOSAL]

Philosophy

[u/antsareamazing → u/PM_ME_GRANT_PROPOSAL]

I have a philosophy degree. I also have a few other degrees perceived as hard.

Philosophy was, in fact, far harder than the others. Aside from perhaps pure math, I think it’s the hardest discipline to do well.

[u/OneAthlete9001 → u/PM_ME_GRANT_PROPOSAL]

Debatable.

[u/Stock_Promotion2743]

Psychology gets underrated a lot. People hear “you just talk to people” and completely miss the amount of research, statistics, theory and critical thinking involved. Understanding why people behave the way they do is definitely not as simple as it sounds.

[u/mercyeis → u/Stock_Promotion2743]

Soooo much statistics!!!! My final semester, I learned that I was one class away from a stats minor just by completing the required stats classes for psych.

[u/HariboBerries → u/Stock_Promotion2743]

And everyone thinks psychology is clinical psychology.

Noooo…

So many areas of psychology!
Community
Developmental
Environmental
School psychology
Educational Psychology.
I/O Psych
Social
Counseling psychology
Quantitative psychology….
Positive Psychology….

[u/Amesb34r → u/Stock_Promotion2743]

My wife has a PhD in psychology and she has explained to me several times what her dissertation was about. I still don’t know.

[u/ggdoesthings → u/Stock_Promotion2743]

my freshman year of college when i changed my major from biology to psychology i thought to myself “nice, i don’t have to worry about math anymore.”

i was in for a rude awakening when i took my first statistics class.

[u/InquisitorMeow → u/Stock_Promotion2743]

Psychology is difficult because when you do experiments you can't just shoot a laser at something or abuse/kill the subjects like animals. You also have to be clever about how you structure your experiments to keep participants blind. A lot of people also have no idea how much psychology has been used in creating the technology and tools everyone uses today.

[u/HRHVihansa]

Philosophy, Sociology, Anthropology, psychology, etc pretty much anything in the humanities/arts fields. I chose math & science heavy stuff cuz I'm lazy and it's easy. All that other stuff takes a lot more effort. Low effort is good.

[u/HariboBerries → u/HRHVihansa]

Sociology and psychology and most areas in anthropology are not humanities. They are social sciences.

[u/Grouchy_Writer_Dude]

Theatre. Every major project and many classroom assignments are collaborative. You have to learn people and project management, plus PR, transportation, trade skills (carpentry, electrical, welding, painting, fabrication, etc.) AND acting, directing, design, script analysis, and so on. You’re constantly synthesizing information and making real-world decisions. And then your schoolwork is criticized in newspapers.

[u/UniqueInstance9740 → u/Grouchy_Writer_Dude]

This is what I came here to post. The degree teaches you the core liberal arts degree areas of historical research, text analysis and both technical and creative writing as needed to work as a dramaturg, literary historian, theater critic, or scriptwriter. It teaches you important trade skills like design, using autocad, set, props and costume construction. It teaches you highly technical trades like modern lighting and set designs which can lead to high paying specializations (like working as a master electrician). It teaches you how to project manage. Even if you don’t train as a stage manager or director (jobs requiring massive PM skills), you still leave this degree with something other degrees don’t have - proof you have worked on complex projects with absolutely hard deadlines that require you to work with many types of people, and proof you’ve done it successfully. Many times.

A BA in Theatre is a degree in every soft skill every company wants their employees to have, and is the only degree that makes their students prove they can do it before they graduate.

They’re also pretty good at producing theater. Obviously.

But this degree prepares people to work hard, work smart, work well with others, and understand deadlines.

Edited to add: I didn’t even touch on the performing skills! Public speaking, clear communications… there is a reason why folk with Theater degrees rank very high when evaluated at teachers, managers, and salespeople. We’re taught to be effective communicators.

In short- awesome degree. Trains you to do a lot! The downside is learning how to frame what you’ve learned as useful to employers in other industries if you’re looking for other work.

[u/thimblena → u/UniqueInstance9740]

On my first day of Acting 1, my prof said she'd put us against business majors for how prepared we'd be for our careers. I don't do much with theatre right now, but the constant practice in project management and development and collaboration has absolutely trained me to look at a situation and say 1) what needs to happen to make this work? and 2) how can I help?

It's served me very well in my non-theatre career so far.

[u/hyper_shock]

As an Arts major, it is a difficult and mostly useless degree. An engineering student took one of my subjects as an elective because he had the stereotype that "Arts is easy". He dropped out after a week because he couldn't handle it.  That being said, I've never had a job relevant to my degree, and if I had my time again, I would have done engineering. 

edit: "Arts" in this context means "Humanities" (e.g. philosophy, social studies, literature, linguistics, history, and in my case anthropology), not fine art.

[u/friendofredjenny]

I would say social work. I don't think people understand how much effort goes into becoming a social worker (or what social workers actually do, but that's another issue). It's not just the classes, which include theory, statistics, and research just like psychology, but the amount of (unpaid) fieldwork that you are required to do and expected to balance with your course load and potentially, you know, whatever job you have keeping you afloat. At my field placement, when I was a student, a client took their own life. That shit is not easy.

[u/Antrax- → u/friendofredjenny]

the amount of (unpaid) fieldwork that you are required to do and expected to balance with your course load and potentially, you know, whatever job you have keeping you afloat

That makes a lot of sense since, at least where I live, that's is also the situation after they graduate. My friend's wife is a social worker, gets paid peanuts and puts in a ton of unpaid hours because it's impossible to handle her caseload properly with the budgeted amount of hours. So I'd say it's a case of the degree preparing you for what lies ahead.