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my coworker was getting her masters in anthropology and she was really chill and really passionate about her field
but anthropology majors have the worst unemployment of like any other degree so i dont recommend it
she took like 2 extra semesters at the end of her degree and got a second masters in library science and is a librarian now because anthropology no job
math students are usually pretty intense, but i think it would be unfair to lump them in with the rest of the stem majors. way lower proportion of "utilitymaxxing" chuds because pure math is fucking useless for the century you're developing it in (usually (at this point in history anyway)). on the other hand, i'd add philosophy to the skip list. lot of debate perverts and analytical philosophy wankery at the upper levels. taking intro philosophy courses is very fun though. you are correct about physics being a pretty chuddy/liberal program usually. although the grad students are a mix of interesting weirdos and future war criminals.
the pre-med students are always annoying
source: math and physics bachelors, most of a philosophy minor, most of a physics phd
For sure, I agree that mathematicians in my experience have been significantly less annoying than the other male dominated STEM majors but still annoying since some of them had an intelligence superiority complex for studying maths over CS/eng. Also tbh there was still a lot of issues with hygiene and misogyny with lots of the math students I met, and given that I'm still dealing with those issues in the professional workplace of fully grown adult software engineers, I'd like to avoid that for the rest of my life after I leave the industry
I studied undergrad CS at a school with very rigorous maths/cs and engineering
I don't doubt this is partially because my program was lower-tier but other than a professor making an offhand comment about the chemistry department's funding once I don't remember ever having a conversation that suggested a rivalry with other disciplines. Doing a phd was so much more fun than undergrad because the other students were all very passionate about math. There's something really magical about getting to nerd out in a group on a regular basis and I still miss that tbh.
That's really nice. My school was a particular intense type of toxic because the CS and eng students are one of the most coveted for top jobs in silicon valley and hedge funds, and is by far the most well known thing about the school, so that really warps the environment for related majors like math and non software/computer related eng
And yea I agree, discussing math with somebody is magical because there's so few that can speak the language
might i ask why you intend to leave the tech industry, and what you plan on doing after that?
why you intend to leave the tech industry
I just don't enjoy software engineering as a job anymore
I plan on restarting my life from scratch. No goals, just seeing where life takes me. If I ever run out of money I'll just lie on my resume (which I'm great at) and get back into tech
Similar boat. CS jobs were imploding and it seemed like the job itself was getting shittier and more tied up in reactionary politics over time so I moved back home and saved up to go back to school. Now I'm doing CivE so I can be the train man.
fair enough, i kinda did the same thing except i'm dumb and uncreative so i'm trying to get into a different area of tech (IT/network engineering)
well i wish you luck and stand by my assertion that you should be asking yourself that question instead, because if it were me i'd be miserable studying something i'm not interested in just because internet people said it had cool people. after all you can socialize with people outside your major
this isn't really and answer because idk if it has cool people, i'm just choosing it because i like it, but if i were to go back to college i'd study anthropology
because internet people said it had cool people. after all you can socialize with people outside your major
I plan to do both. I've learned that I am not the type of person to enjoy life if I have to suffer through hours of it in an environment I hate (software engineering environment) and then spend the rest of my free time in environments I like
oh 100%, if you don't like that kind of weirdo math monk, definitely not your people. they're not that much better than STEM chuds, just generally less interested in money.
haha yes, I genuinely love math (and it's derivatives like physics, eng, cs) way more than any other subject but personality wise I relate to the arts and humanities vibes and also the slightly crazy party blonde girl stereotypes way more and it's such a struggle since the personalities of my peers are the complete opposite typically minus the wooky drug abusers in math/SWE lmao
of debate perverts and analytical philosophy wankery at the upper levels
Depends heavily on the program tbh
Anthropology. They're a bunch of weirdos and I love them. They lean anarchist politically in my experience
How's the field itself? I hear it's been grappling with itself how much the field was built on top of racist and Eurocentric foundations and so lots of previous research some anthropologists just say aren't valid? And then there's an opposing faction of course and they fight often
https://davidgraeber.org/wp-content/uploads/2015-Radical-aterity-is-just-another-way-of-saying-reality-A-reply-to-Viveiros-de-Castro.pdf oh ho ho, an opportunity to pitch a potentially interesting david graeber essay
The field still has its issues with respectful settler indigenous relations, if such a thing is possible lmao. It's better than it used to be and yeah, a lot of past research has just been thrown out as a result but the anthropologists I have met are really trying to study other cultures without harming them. Learning how to acknowledge and combat your own biases is taught in anth 101 and retaught in every following class.
Varies a lot by program. I enjoyed my classes. Honestly some of my first real intros to Marxist thought (hat tip to my TA Jason Hickel).
(hat tip to my TA Jason Hickel).
Wait what?
Yup!
That's so cool. What was the class on, Marxism?
No, it was several Anthro classes. Him and his roommate were both super cool.
At the graduate-level, religion. As long as you aren't going to a Christian college specifically. But like Harvard Divinity School, UC Berkeley, etc are cool. At that level, they've weeded out the undergrads who write "Christianity is true because the bible said so" and you're not studying theology so you have a lot more interdisciplinary work with people of different religious backgrounds. Even atheists who study a certain niche religious group or time period like any anthropologist would.
It's more about religious people and what they believe, how that is affected by their culture and background, how they and it interfaces with society, etc. There's even room in there for Marxists. Look up the Dalit Buddhist movement and see how they used religion as a way to shed their oppressed caste status. There's plenty of class analysis to be had in similar scenarios, even now.
Look at how Zen Buddhism was used as a tool to steel the nerves of Japanese kamikaze pilots and how almost every Zen temple in Japan except the Soka Gakkai (who are weird in their own right) were fascist collaborators. How Japanese Christians were treated relatively better than Buddhists in the American internment camps, etc.
oooo that sounds interesting, it's just a specialization within sociology it sounds like?
Religious Studies is its own field that encompasses history, anthropology, sociology, philosophy, etc. It's distinct from theology in that its from the outsider perspective, meaning you may or may not believe in the religion you study, but you aren't coming at it from a personal relationship with God, from a devotion toward Shiva, etc.
It's just the application of all those disciplines to religion specifically. You can be a philosopher/"theologian" who goes very deep into Buddhist Hermeneutics, a historian who focuses on animal rights within a certain tradition/time period and knows little of the present, a sociologist who examines how religion functions among the poor of a certain society, etc.
I know a professor who was working on a book about superstition and the disorganized religions of sailors, how their myths and beliefs about the sea developed even cross-culturally among sailors from different countries. Another was working on a comparative book about sports, boxing specifically, and how sports communities mirror certain behaviors of religious groups. Another was looking at medicine within Daoist and Native American religious ceremonies that were later adopted as mainstream medicine. One focused specifically on the concept of the Good Samaritan and the use of the archetype in literature. Another focused on cross-examining philosophical similarities between religious terrorist cells from Christianity, Buddhism, the Aum Shinrikyo cult, and what motivated them (the motivations typically being material, with scripture being used as justification after the fact). There's a lot of stuff going on in the realm of Islam-Jewish relations right now, as you can imagine.
It's very open ended and you can go more heady and abstract, or more grounded and applicable to finding solutions. I'm sure it helps to understand why and how the Falun Gong operate in order to stop their spread, for example. Or the Jonestown people. Or Christian terrorists in the USA. And so on.
For something relatable to Hexbears, how closely related the Church and the Tsarists were in Russia, which was part of the reason for the extremely harsh reaction toward them after the Russian Revolution. Eventually pissing off the common people enough to dial it back. Looking at how religion intermingles with politics and class interests.
Environmental Science, Ecology, and Freshwater Science are all pretty neat.
Ohh yess I agree. The geo eng students were the only chill eng students on average when I was in school
I did environmental science and had no regret. You intersect with a lot of multidisciplinary sciences, chemistry, biology, physics, applied math, and the one unifying theme is that people generally like outdoor activities like hiking, cycling, climbing, camping, etc.
Oh damn I actually hate outdoor activities other than casually strolling along the coast or a park lmao
Physics people are nothing like those other ones if you avoid the "top tier" universities. Physics people are usually very chill nerds who smoke lots of weed and tend to be deeply interested in the subject for itself not for career reasons (outside top tier - I mean I assume I went to a mid-low tier at best uni lol).
Ecology. In theory, the federal government still must enforce the law, so the clean air act, environmental protection act, and endangered species act means they provide funding for environmental scientists to collect data on and participate in protecting the environment. Not sure if you can find a more rewarding and less damaging job. Plus all the ecology people I know from work are the right kind of folk
Microbiology was pretty chill grad. Though mine was a special masters based more on theory. But my professors let me represent my thesis when I was straggling with it.
Honestly really sad that I can't do more of it because of my disabilities and capitalism. But everyone was always surprised about my way of thinking and coming up with sound waves affecting biofilms.
sociology. easy enough to minor in for most majors. wouldn't necessarily major in it unless you pair it with something like statistics.
Why not major? Is it just for the employability? This would purely be for fun, I wouldn't care about a career. Also, do you think studying sociology in school is worth the tuition? It seems like a subject relatively easy enough (compared to other majors) to read and learn in your free time and discuss with people
Vs something like history where you get access to artifacts, arts/sciences/eng you get access to equipment, maths you get access to other maths students which is way rarer than people who study sociology
kinda rambling sorry: stats rec was mostly for employability; that's why i rec it as minor/double major, it's generally added onto something else like urban development (urban soc) ecological sciences (eco soc) etc. idk i wouldn't have minded majoring in it myself but i wanted to graduated on time so a minor is what i did. and as far as it's 'worth tuition' idk completely subjective depends on how much you enjoy what you're studying i guess since you said it's mostly for passion/fun and not necessarily for employment. not sure what your situation is but you might be able to audit classes a la carte and see what you really enjoy before committing.
fwiw most of my soc professors were some form of queer marxists
Forestry and/or Agroecology in my experience.
NOT education/teaching, classmates are the worst pit of reactionaries and radlibs posing as progressive ive ever seen in my life
I'm in Europe, but maybe social work? I met some really cool people who studied that. In my experience, they tend to all be left leaning and have really impressive social skills, though I know there are also some hardcore libs who really bought into the ideology.
If you want real marxists, there are some in geography. It's because of the big picture view, that let's you see contradictions. And people like David Harvey taught some of the field to read Marx.
I think there are annoying people everywhere and yes, some fields have more than others, but there are also cool people everywhere. Just find them and stick to them (wish I had followed that advice more myself). If you find just two friends (and have the means), you can have fun studying whatever your want.
Look for international students from countries outside the imperial core. They have less propaganda to unlearn and have material incentive to be anti imperialist. Some might be from rich comprador families, but even then, they are quicker to move left, then white libs.
I was gonna say something like "no college at all" but most of my coworkers suck so nvm
The no college folks I've met in SF/Oakland and active in the arts/music/party and social activism scenes were typically very cool!
If you're doing this in the bay, study whatever you want and check out the Berkeley student coops. You don't have to go to UC Berkeley to live in most of the houses. The math/cs/physics people there were the coolest I'd ever met.
why don't you pick something yourself based on your innate interests
"I would love to study math/CS/physics/eng but that's out of the question because I hate the people that usually study that"
well sure i get the sentiment, but surely you have interests outside of that
you say you're doing it purely for fun, but what things would you consider fun to study
but what things would you consider fun to study
sociology and history mostly but tbh I could always just read a book or something. The social environment is a pretty significant part of the academic experience
I do, but none of them are academic subjects you know? If it's not one of those aforementioned fields of study, I would probably enjoy studying and learning just about anything deeply in an academic environment, and so the social environment then becomes the largest factor
Gonna say, art? I dated an art major who had a minor in law and justice, she loved art but was very lib.