In the beginning, Al Gore created http://
As everyone who knows even the slightest bit about me is aware, I am obsessive about school and would like to return ASAP. The magical thing about Tucson is that it’s home to the University of Arizona. The magical thing about the University of Arizona is that it’s not the U of I it’s got a lot of really cool majors and appears to be a very good school overall.
One particularly interesting-sounding major I came across this evening arises from the engineering department: systems engineering. On the U of A engineering department’s website, systems engineering is defined as a field “…concerned with the design, modeling, and analysis of technological systems that employ people and machines, software and hardware, material and energy for such diverse purposes as communication, health care, transportation or manufacturing…if complex systems are to do what is intended, without unwanted side effects, they must be designed not only with imagination and technical skill, but with rigorous attention to the design process itself and to the interactions among the system components and with other systems and society.”
And, “…the curriculum provides students with design viewpoints and methodologies that emphasize system integration, and with subject matter and tools for modeling and analysis especially appropriate for large complex systems, e.g., probability and statistics, system theory, decision analysis, and simulation.”
So…it’s basically like statistics with an engineering bend, or so that’s what I gather.
HOW COOL?
Also, they explicitly list Raytheon as one of the major employers of system engineers, and Raytheon has a special polar exploration sector that I’d totally love to worm my way into someday. Antarctica, I’m coming for you soon, I swear.
I must conduct further research on this field…
Wouldn’t it have made more sense to build that city on metal? Just sayin’…
So I randomly found some article today that was talking about a college that was cutting their Philosophy department completely out of the school because Philosophy is, they figure, a completely worthless major.
I call bullshit.
I hated philosophy when I first started college and didn’t “get it.” But I’m pretty sure I still would have questioned a college cutting it entirely.
So, because you all know I love lists and love annoying you with my opinions, I present to you a list of seven skills that I have seen sharply defined by people taking philosophy classes or people who are philosophy majors.
Go!
Arguing skills
Standing up and screaming your point does not take skill, it just takes powerful lungs (or fast fingers if you use sign language). Standing up and debating/defending your point with actual support does. Sometimes you think you support an issue when you’re really just unsure about where you stand; often, being forced to argue your point in class after class (after class after class…) makes you stop and think about some sort of cogent chain of support for your stance in your head before you stand up and start yelling stuff at the people around you.
You think philosophy classes involve sitting around discussing Kant? I remember Philosophy of Mind involving spring-up-out-of-your-chair-with-passion-and-a-logical-retort types of arguments. It was freaking great.
Written argument skills
Very different than verbal arguments. Not everyone can make a vehement and convincing argument as equally vehement and convincing on paper. Phil majors are pretty much required to. Why are you opposed to Machiavellian ethics? Are there similarities between Hume’s distinction between reason and sentiment and pragmatic environmentalism? Why is Leibniz the sexiest thing ever (a highly philosophical question)? You can make similarly strong points with the written word as you can with the spoken word, you just have to know how.
Writing skills in general
Proper essay format gets BEATEN INTO YOUR HEAD in philosophy classes as it does in intro English classes, though philosophy classes teach you how to use the generic outline to your benefit in ways English 101 never taught you.
Logic
Essential to arguments. Essential to pretty much everything else. Aside from all the other “logic,” Symbolic Logic particularly has been helpful in other classes, including the dreaded and most-feared Linear Algebra, Psychology of Learning, and Multivariate Analysis. I’m sure I haven’t seen the last of it.
A slightly different (and much less appreciated) history degree
Learning philosophy is like learning the history of the world, albeit through a slightly different lens. If you get a large enough range of philosophers, you’re able to group them into the time periods during which they were prominent. You can see the correlation between the major things that were going on during the time the philosopher was active and the things they wrote about. I remember Western history better ‘cause I know what all the white dudes in Europe were talking about at specific times. It’s strange, but it works.
An interesting way of merging disciplines
You’d be surprised how often philosophers’ discussions coincide with problems in other fields, particularly science. I’m surprised there’s such an overlap between philosophical discussions/theories and statistics. Probably not enough that would convince the formation of a joint philosophy/statistics degree (much to my chagrin), but quite a lot nonetheless.
An obscure sense of humor
The best of all possible benefits of being a philosophy major.
[subject]
Bwahahaha! It’s time to change my plans again! So I figured out that getting a major and three minors will be faster than getting two majors, so here’s my new plan:
I’m sticking with my psychology major, cause I love, it, and switching my English major to an English minor while adding a philosophy minor and a history minor.
Yeah.
This is my new plan and I’m sticking with it. If I keep up this pace, I’ll be out of here in three years with a bachelor’s in psychology and three minors, and I think that’s pretty damn good.
Ambitious or insane? You be the judge.
No, wait.
I’ll be the judge.
You just sit there and look pretty.
Major confusion (no pun intended)
Yes, school is out, I’m aware of that, and yes, I’m still posting blogs under the category of “School, College, Greek”.
Geek with no life.
Anyways, I’m once again confused about what field(s) I should major in. I thought I had it narrowed down to psychology and theatre, but there’s so much I want to do–psychology, chemistry, astronomy, quantum physics (yes, quantum physics), art, theatre, music…all sorts of stuff. WTF should I do?!?! So much confusion!
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