We all know that UMass Boston has a ton of majors, and that every single one of them is important and useful. The thing is there are some majors that are seen as more helpful than others, and because of that, some majors are not given the credit they deserve. Mostly, I am talking about my own experience, majoring in a “soft science”. I am a sociology major in my second year of college and to be honest, I have gotten some rude comments about my major. They ranged from people laughing at the fact that I must be stupid because I cannot study real science, to them being worried about my future career possibilities. This is a message to anyone who thinks studying a soft science is a waste of time and money. 

The first thing that needs to be addressed is this: I did not ask for you to tell me how helpful chemistry, biology, or physics is, and how unhelpful sociology is. If you are so interested in my major and how it is or is not going to help me in my life, then you should at least do some research about it. Anytime someone has tried to talk to me about how useless my major is, they just do not know about it. Just because you do not know the uses for a major does not mean the major is useless. Take a spoon for example; if you did not know spoons were made for eating soup and not steak, then you would probably think the spoon is pretty useless when trying to eat a steak with it. Not only is it rude to tell someone that they will not get anywhere in life with their major, it is also really hurtful. I have spent many nights trying to figure out a “better” major for me to get into. Not because I do not love what I am studying, but because other people have made me feel like a loser for my major. I even had a coworker at a prior job tell me that the only reason I get good grades is because my major is easy. There are no easy majors, there are people who work hard and work for the grades they get. I did not pick Sociology as a major because I wanted a job that would make me a millionaire. I chose Sociology because I love the subject and I cannot see myself doing anything else with my life. 

Okay, so what can I do with a degree in Sociology besides being a professor of sociology? (Not that that wouldn’t be pretty awesome). Well, pretty much anything you want to do. You could work in the media taking information and analyzing it to show a network what types of shows pull in the most views. You could work in healthcare to see how patients feel about the facility and the staff that are working for it. You could work in politics and focus on political polling to figure out which areas a campaign should post advertisements in. You could work for lawyers to see what types of cases are the most prominent so that the law office can be better prepared to handle them. You can work in any field you want to work in with sociology. Just because you do not know about someone’s major it does not mean it will not be helpful for them in the future.