Masters of none

"What do you want to be when you grow up?"

Adults first asked us this when we were still in elementary school. They expected the same old answers, which is exactly what we gave them. An astronaut. A princess. Back then, the possibilities were endless. The sky the limit. 

"What do you want to be when you grow up?" They asked us again in middle school. Our answers were hardly better than before. A firefighter. An actor. A football player. We gave them glorious careers.

College applications asked us once more during our senior year of high school: "What do you want to be when you grow up?"

This took us by surprise. Isn’t college all about figuring that out? We didn’t really know what to say, then. We gave what we thought were likely answers. A dentist. A nurse. Maybe a lawyer. Whether these were our answers or our parents' answers is hard to tell. 

Now, as college students, we’re more realistic among ourselves. And more direct. "So you’ll probably become a consultant?" Yes. Probably a consultant. 

Duke churns out hundreds of consultants every year. It seems that generations of students before us have made the same easy decision. Specialize in financial economics. Get a consulting job in a mid-size firm. Tread the well-marked path. 

Sophomore spring is a pinnacle moment in every Duke student’s career. The Class of 2027 will soon have to declare its major.

Maybe it won’t be so bad. Maybe we'll still like learning new things in a couple of years.

After all, the summer left us craving to learn anything and everything. When the shopping cart opened for fall registration, we felt like kids in a candy store. With so many options, how could we possibly choose? But the work that the fall semester brought with it changed our minds — it gave us learning indigestion. We’ve already had enough. 

But this mid-semester burnout doesn’t only have to do with overwhelming workloads. It’s also the fact that our classes are almost the same as they were last semester and so similar to each other in the first place. There then seems to be a discrepancy between what students want to do — cherry-pick unique classes that seem interesting — and what Duke asks them to do — choose a major and run with it. The ironic thing is, we’d be better off doing the former.

Theoretically, Duke students get to choose 24 classes outside of their major requirements. Already, this isn’t a great deal. Out of four years of classes, about one-third of them will be major-specific. And within many majors’ requirements, there’s little to no wiggle room. Emphasis on specific. But most Duke students aren’t content with only one major. When having to fulfill two to three different sets of degree requirements, it’s no saying that there’s little space for students to "explore."

Willingly or not, Duke is helping narrow students’ interests too early on in their academic journeys. Duke students are automatically subscribed to their major’s weekly newsletter as soon as they declare. We are invited to events related to our major’s prospective careers. We are encouraged to network with professors from our major’s department. We are told to start building our resumes early. As a result, we take interest only in our respective majors. We don’t distinguish ourselves.

And it’s a self-fulfilling prophecy. The more we specialize in a subject, the more we become proficient in it, the more we become interested in it. Even our family becomes convinced that we were "born to be a doctor." But it could have gone a different way. 

And the worst thing is, we’re sold this scheme as our being encouraged to "explore our interests." But our academic curiosity was killed long ago with that career survey. Now we need to be reminded that learning "something about everything" outside our majors is just as important. 

That was the original purpose of the university as the old philosophers had imagined it: education as a single endeavor. Not separating the topic from the field of study. Not separating the mechanism from its application nor theory from practice. And that’s not all: Only having reached a certain mastery in the basic subjects — philosophy, mathematics, logic and medicine — were students allowed to break off and specialize in a singular field. 

Plato would not be too happy with our mass-produced institutions. They put students too early on non-intersecting tracks to specific destinations. They release too many ignorant consultants.

When industrialization swept across the United States in the early 1800s, cheap, disposable labor was replaced by even cheaper machines. Jobs were knocked over like dominoes. And now some wonder if artificial intelligence will do the same in this century.

What measures can we take as soon-to-be contributors to the workforce to protect ourselves from such an untamable and unpredictable beast? 

Perhaps, the answer is the same as it’s always been. The oldest law of Nature: diversification. An ecosystem’s health can be estimated by a single metric: its biodiversity. The more complex the ecosystem structure, the faster it will likely recover from a disturbance. The more genetically varied the species, the more likely it is to survive a new disease. 

Economists know this too. That’s why they say to diversify your portfolio. 

Yet economics majors fail to diversify their wealth of knowledge and skills beyond what is strictly required by their majors. 

Perhaps, we just don’t have the time. Sure, we might be mildly interested in astrology. But in this economy, the only way to keep afloat is to pick an easy A to fulfill the science requirement and use that class time to catch up on other courses. Reading up on constellations is all fun and games — but I have to finish my Econ homework first.

Unfortunately, this lack of interest in classes outside their majors impacts these students’ grades in all classes. 

That doesn’t seem right. How could knowing the basics of astrology possibly help me better understand supply and demand? But subjects, at their core, are all deeply interconnected. Skills are shared across subjects. If you have to learn French vocab, you'll also learn its Latin root. You’ll have to know basic algebra to ace a physics or game-theory exam. And whether you’re majoring in biology or computer science, you’ll have to know how to speak to a group and put together a compelling PowerPoint. 

I was thinking all this as I was helping my friend do his chemistry homework recently using only some basics of calculus and geology. I learned about specific heat capacity, while he learned how to rework units to derive a formula. Importantly, we both took home something valuable.

This is interesting because sometimes we limit ourselves to putting time into opportunities that are linked to our major. Importantly, time spent on a class we’re not even taking might feel wasted. But it’s not wasted at all. 

Having a basic grip of a variety of skills and a basic understanding of all subjects has high returns at the undergraduate level. But that’s not all. Knowing how the world works from different angles makes us better world leaders. Successful communicators bank on the fact that the best way to explain something is with an analogy. 

By encouraging students to specialize in specific fields early on in their education, colleges across the board are making students less unique. And by segregating education paths, they are limiting not only students’ career possibilities, but also their success in life. 

We should be doing all the opposite. As students, we need a well-rounded education to become flexible workers and successful communicators. We first need to be jacks of all trades if we want to become masters of one. 

And if our interests don’t only fall in one specific field, which they likely don’t, all the better. We shouldn’t try to suppress our wilder dreams.

One can never approach the same problem from too many angles. Solutions can and should be shared across disciplines. A broader background will help us build intuition of how the world works. 

But we knew this from the start. That’s what our elementary school teachers called "thinking outside the box." 

Anna Garziera is a Trinity sophomore. Her pieces typically run on alternate Tuesdays.