I shall now eat my hand

[rivendellrose]

God fucking damn it all to hell!!! Is there no major, in all this gigantic-ass public university and amidst the metric fuck-ton of possible majors, that will let a person study mythology, religion, ancient history, archaeology, and anthropology, all rolled into ONE major???

English won't count anything that wasn't originally written in English.

Comparative Lit wants me to study film, and won't accept my studies in religion or actual history.

Comparative Religion won't accept my studies of Scandinavian mythology, even though it was taught as a fucking religious study. (Study of Ancient GREEK AND ROMAN religion is okay, it can be accepted into the major (but only for 3 credits instead of 5), but Nooooo, we can't have this crazy Scandinavian mythology and religion being accepted, that just wouldn't be intellectual enough. Which is funny because, for god's sake, I don't know of any organized groups that practice the worship of Jupiter anymore, but I damned well know of ones that worship the gods of Asgard. I know - I wrote my paper on them.)

Classics will only accept the mythology, history, and archaeology of Greece and Rome.

Anthropology won't accept religion or mythology studies, and it offers classes in the anthropology of every fucking culture except ancient European. Ancient China? You bet. Southeast Asia? Sure! Africa? Without a doubt! Native America? Of course! Ancient Europe? NO!! No anthropology for you!!!! You're not cool enough, you're not new enough, you can't have anthropological studies on you. You're too normal, everyone knows about you.

(Just to make a point, this is exactly the sort of colonialist thinking that anthropology is supposedly trying to combat, nowadays - god forbid the magnifying glass be turned on our OWN cultural past, rather than someone else's.)

I HATE THIS. Why can't this stupid university have a major in mythology or something? No matter what I do, a huge part of what I study is useless and doesn't 'fit' even though I know it relates! All I want is a second major that will let me study this stuff, but I want the things I've already done to count for something! Is that so very much to ask???

Comments

[lennaofmidearth.livejournal.com]

A school that big doesn't offer the chance to create your own major? That sucks. I was going to ceate my own when was in college, but they didn't offer the huge selection the big universities do so I just went with history.

I took all the Anthro classes they offered, but they didn't have archaeology so my Anthro professor and my advisor created the class just for me. It was me and my professor sitting on a bench outside *laughs*. But it was a 4000 level course and I got full credits, a lot of knowledge and an A.

Small college versus large University, they both have assets and drawbacks I guess.

And I'm telling you, I'd be right there with you for all those classes you want. That would be the best curriculum ever. I love all that stuff.

[rivendellrose.livejournal.com]

There is the option to do that, yeah, but honestly... it's kind of embarassing to go through all that when I'm already in my senior year, and already have a normal major. And I'm kind of leery of getting involved in anything too avant garde at the moment, because over the next two quarters I have to finish my departmental honors stuff - namely, choose and advisor and write an independent 20-some page thesis. Big bleck.

I'm just panicking because, honestly, I'm realizing that I don't really have a huge desire to go do English for the rest of my life. It changes from minute to mminute, but at the moment, I really don't want to teach, and I'm not vastly thrilled about going into office work. I don't know what I want to do. So that's the real basis of all this. The stuff in my post was just kind of a cathartic explosion.

[ursula]

The whole point of getting a liberal arts degree is that you're supposed to learn enough about reasoning & communicating along the way that once you figure out what you do want to do, you'll be able to.

The traditional retreats of the English major which you haven't ruled out above are publishing, library science, technical writing, and working for bookstores. There's the entire nonprofit sector. There's law school. And there's the fact that you'll probably live till you're eighty ;)

[rivendellrose.livejournal.com]

That's a good point - I hadn't thought of it that way.

Law school is out (I really hate legal stuff), but the others are all tempting. Library science... I wish I had the kind of tech know-how that's required for those jobs, nowadays. I'd have done better when it was all card based, or, better yet, back when the librarians simply had to know where books were. That's still how I operate in libraries about 80% of the time. ;)

[ursula]

Ah, the hidden benefit of having attended a small liberal arts school-- they send you mail about how practical they are! ;)

Laurabelle may be a technical goddess, but I'm guessing there's still a mild demand for the sort of librarian who chooses which books to buy in the children's section and that sort of thing. (And don't underestimate your own computer literacy!)

What I would do, though, is spend a little time contemplating what sounds most fun: working for a small press? Some sort of magazine? If a nonprofit, what kind of nonprofit? (You could contemplate all this after you graduate, of course.) Small presses & nonprofits aren't exactly rolling in money, so you might end up with an internship and a job at Borders rather than a proper job your first year, but it beats temping angstily.

[ursula]

What about CHID? (It seems almost right, though there are these capstone course things . . .)

Of course, anyone who really cares will read your transcript :)

[rivendellrose.livejournal.com]

Possibly, yeah... I don't know. This is all confusing the hell out of me, and the main problem is that I don't really know what the heck I want anymore. Aside from not to be graduating this year.

[ladysonnet.livejournal.com]

Okay, first, take a second to breathe, and to remember that the University of Washington has been messing people up for years before you even got there. :) I've found that state schools don't seem to consider 'making things work for students' to be a high priority.

Second, let's focus on this statement:
"I HATE THIS. Why can't this stupid university have a major in mythology or something? No matter what I do, a huge part of what I study is useless and doesn't 'fit' even though I know it relates! All I want is a second major that will let me study this stuff, but I want the things I've already done to count for something! Is that so very much to ask???"

And with that in mind, let's consider what my parents told me when they sent me off to college: You go to college to get an education, not a career.

Now, I know with interests like that, you might not be looking for a career. Unless you want to be a high school mythology teacher, which is valid. So let's take 'career' and change it to 'major'. But I guess what I'm saying is that you don't need to be so worried about what 'fits' or what 'counts'. Or, really, you don't need to be so worried about what counts to the UW, only with what counts to you. Are you getting what I'm saying? Yeah, you can finish a major and get your BA in whatever. And you can take a lot of other classes too, that the UW doesn't care about but is important to YOU. You can get the education that YOU want. That's why you get those 'whatever' credits. I was an archaeology major. I know a lot about archaeology. But I also took a lot of Art History courses. And I know a lot about Art History. I like that, but I don't have any AH labels/degrees. And that's okay.

I hope this makes some sense. I guess what I'm saying is try to keep in mind that the classes you take aren't useless if they count to you.

Bethany

[ladysonnet.livejournal.com]

Oh, and of course, for politeness sake, and just to be clear about everything- in regards to the bold parts, they should have been prefaced with "emphasis mine". They were the ones that stood out to me.

B

[rivendellrose.livejournal.com]

Education for education's sake is the biggest thing to me, and I don't at all regret taking the classes that don't 'count' toward anything. For the most part, they were the ones that were the most important to me. And that's what's getting under my skin, I guess - the realization that I like English, and I'm good at it... but it's not really what matters the most to me at the moment. And that makes me wonder what the heck I'm doing taking it as my primary focus, and what I ought to be studying instead.

Cut down to the most basic level, this is me having a bit of a crisis about what I'm doing next, what I want to do when I get out of college, and all that. Bitching about the departments, sadly, is just a convenient outlet. Even though I know that my major doesn't really determine what I'm going to be doing, I keep getting nigglings that I might be moving more toward things I want to do if I was studying something different, and that's driving me nuts.

[shadawyn.livejournal.com]

See if you can monkey something to blanket it in under General Studies (IE, create your own major). I had a friend who did that to get a degree in "Medieval Studies".

[rivendellrose.livejournal.com]

That'd be interesting... yeah, I might have to look into that. I wonder if they'll take that kind of thing as a second major...

[chasdini.livejournal.com]

Hey Jen,

Sorry the dept.'s are frustrating you, but I have good news =)
The Comp. Religion Dept. DOES accept SCAND 330 (Scandinavian Mythology)...I know, cause I'm recieving 5 credits from it toward my major.
In fact they accept:
SCAND 330 Scandinavian Mythology
SCAND 332 Folk Belief and World View
SCAND/HSTAM 370 The Vikings

Why don't you go here: http://depts.washington.edu/religion/bacourses.html

And check out all the courses that Comparative Religion does accept, cause if my memory serves me, you've taken quite a few of the classes that they accept. You'd probably only be missing your Textual Studies, the 3 required RELIG Course, and maybe one other course.

[chasdini.livejournal.com]

Addendum:

If some of the courses listed on the website aren't showing up in a DARS assessment of your classes, all you need to do is go talk to one of the advisors in the JSIS main office, which is in Thompson, 1st floor.
Oh, yeah, and you've already taken RELIG 202, so you'd only need 201 & 380 from the actual RELIG dept.

[rivendellrose.livejournal.com]

o.O I am such a moron for using DARS to check that. Yeah, I've taken a heck of a lot of what they require, because I was planning on taking a minor until I realized (I thought) that a lot of the stuff I'm into wouldn't count. Having taken Religion 201, 202, and one on Greek and Roman religion, and SCAND 330 and 370 (and I would happily take 332, also)... yeah, that's starting to look like a pretty damned good option.

Thank you so much - I'll look into that right now!

[narsilion.livejournal.com]

DudE, you have a LOT of very helpful and caring friends, I love that!!!!!!
Hope you're feeling better. Love ya!!

[rivendellrose.livejournal.com]

Yeah, I'm feeling better; that was just a momentary outpouring of rage. ;)

[erynn-lasgalen.livejournal.com]

Jen, you are the perfect candidate for a position in our wonderful organization known as "Comparative History of Ideas". Haven´t you looked into it before? It´s incredible! You can even minor in it now (as of about a quarter ago...)

I definitely think you should look into it, it´s a great major, and some of the best people! Just about anything at all counts for the major, as long as you can show them how. I hope you check it out, the website is: depts.washington.edu/chid And I´m always willing to rave about the department, if you want to ask me anything.

The only downside of the entire program is trying to describe it to others who aren´t in the program... Because it is so many things to so many different people, that it can be anything you want!

ok, that´s it I promise. ((CHID IS GREAT))

[rivendellrose.livejournal.com]

I can't remember why I didn't look into it at the beginning - I think because I'd always been under the impression that I would naturally major in English. I looked into other things, but stuff like statistics kept pushing me away... so I just went for what's easy to me.

Yeah.... it's probably time to talk to a CHID advisor, I guess. Or, at the very least, figure out whether this is really what I need.

[zinjadu.livejournal.com]

*cough*CHID*cough*

[rivendellrose.livejournal.com]

*Snickers* Okay, okay - I'll look into it. ;)