College Degree Usefulness

Sometimes it seems that what we study in college doesn’t have much relation to what we end up doing for a living. Following is a list of various degrees, as well as what graduates actually end up doing after earning them.

Computer Science

College

Spend most of your time in a dimly lit lab, playing obscure computer role-playing games and drinking Jolt. Interact only with other CS majors, and only via the Internet if you can manage it. Become passionately involved only in the continuing Unix/Linux/Windows/Macintosh debate.

Real Life

Spend most of your time in a dimly lit office, playing Flight Simulator and drinking gourmet coffee... ...at least five cups an hour. Interact only with your own project team, and then only via e-mail. Become passionately involved in the continuing debate over who pays when the schedule slips, which wasn’t your fault because you told them to take DOOM-playing into account from the beginning.

Psychology

College

Spend most of your time in a dimly-lit lab, playing with rats and other vermin. Drink Jolt by the six-pack to stay up all night with the rodents. Interact only with other Psychos, but only to analyze their behavior in non-lab situations. Become involved in the continuing debate over whether a trained rat could succeed as a comp sci major.

Real Life

Spend most of your time in an unemployment line and living in a cardboard box with other vermin, wishing you’d changed to CS instead of the rat. Continue to consider yourself superior to social work majors.

Economics

College

Spend most of your time in a brightly-lit room full of charts and graphs. Learn about supply and demand, GNP, supply and demand, prime rates, supply and demand, inflation, and supply and demand.

Real Life

Spend most of your time in a brightly-lit government office with people who look just like you. Issue reports you wrote in college because you’re too lazy to write a new one. Watch newscaster explain your report to unsuspecting viewers. Listen to President explain that the economy sucks because of unemployed psychologists.

Philosophy

College

Read books by dead guys. Debate whether a tree falling alone in a forest will say, "Oh, crud! Not again!" Consider the ethical problems in the killing of annoying street mimes. Get failed by prof for not liking the correct dead guy.

Real Life

Spend most of your time in a dimly lit office, playing Flight Simulator and drinking gourmet coffee... ...at least five cups an hour. Interact only with your own project team, and then only via e-mail. Become passionately involved in the continuing debate over who pays when the schedule slips, which wasn’t your fault because you told them to take DOOM-playing into account from the beginning. Be thankful you switched to comp sci, which pays better than being a dead philosopher.

Math

College

Spend your time in a cramped office, thinking about polydimensional shapes and arguing their properties with other mathematicians. Scream when they steal your work. Steal their work. Be a social outcast.

Real Life

See above. You work for the university.