Another thought that’s been running through my head, in part based on the idea that I heard in last night’s presentations and elsewhere that these days twenty-somethings are more likely to spend some time after college in an extended period of gathering their thoughts and figuring out where they want to go – possibly returning home to live with parents or taking some time before beginning their careers. In an odd coincidence of timing, I had just been talking to one of my officemates at St. Joe’s about how many of my future options and choices were shaped by the decision I made to major in philosophy as an undergrad: a decision I made at the age of 18 in large part because as a college freshman I had a history class I hated and a philosophy class I loved, and I couldn’t drop the former without dropping the latter. I never took another history course as an undergrad. So when I decided to pursue a graduate degree, philosophy seemed the most logical course. And when I decided that I wanted to pursue a career in secondary education, all of a sudden I found myself in a graduate degree program that did not match up particularly well with my overall career goals. So now here I am finishing up a second graduate degree. How different might all of that have been if I had loved the history course and disliked the philosophy class?
Read the remainder of this entry »