COLUMN: Don’t cheat yourself out of a complete education
It was the fall of my sophomore year when the devastating moment came. I had worked so hard to avoid it; I had wept at the prospect of its inevitable arrival. My stomach churned with anxiety as I finally sat down to face it at the stroke of midnight on Nov. 15, 2011. I logged onto Banner – and signed up for my first college math class.
Through my high school and early college years, math and I had enjoyed a relationship that could be described as occupying the chilly sector of the friendzone. I could understand the concepts well enough, but that mattered little, because I had effectively convinced myself that math was irrelevant. I had talked myself out of even caring about math, so by the time I got into college I was quite content to settle into a social sciences program that wouldn’t require a whit of math for the next four years.
To be sure, the intense critical thinking and analytic writing skills I focused on developing in my political science classes were worthy pursuits. Those skills serve an integral function in making sense of the world; in explaining why it operates the way it does and in enabling people to do something to improve it. I’m biased in favor of my field, as we all are, but I really haven’t got a single regret about the outstanding liberal arts education I’ve received in political science.
Why, then, did I willfully throw myself into the quantitative lions’ den during my sophomore year? It was because I’d realized, at some point in those early semesters, that math did matter. More broadly stated, quantitative literacy mattered. I realized even as much as I was enjoying my liberal arts classes – and even as valuable as they were – they were only one part of the story. I made a decision at that point that I didn’t want to graduate from college without having gained as well-rounded and holistic an education as I could get.
I didn’t regret my sophomore decision to leap the cross-disciplinary fence; in fact, I found such relevance and utility in that first math class that I followed it in subsequent semesters with three statistics classes and quantitative projects and study beyond the classroom. Grudging duty gradually blossomed into a sincere appreciation for the complementary expansion of knowledge that quantitative analysis lent to my primarily qualitative studies.
The bottom line from my experience was that it was worth getting a well-rounded education, even if it meant stepping out of my comfort zone, reconditioning my attitude or jeopardizing my grades.
This column isn’t directed just to liberal arts students. In fact, there’s an equally glaring deficit of well-roundedness in quantitatively-oriented fields, because many science and engineering students have convinced themselves writing and qualitative analysis are simply irrelevant for them. Not so. While there is good reason for students to specialize in their chosen fields of study, be it civil engineering or sociology, the most powerful force to be reckoned with is a 360-degree education.
To solve the increasingly complex problems of our age, we’re going to need engineers who can understand how to navigate the political system of a third-world country just as well they understand as how to build a well. We’re going to need English teachers who can impart a passion for Shakespeare to their students while understanding the statistical demographic trends affecting their inner-city school.
You don’t need to have flawless mastery of an “opposite” field in order to experience the positive returns that come with developing cross-disciplinary dexterity. Whatever your major, don’t cheat yourself out of the opportunity to gain a well-rounded education.
– Briana is a political science major in her last semester at USU. She is an avid road cyclist and a 2013 Truman Scholar. Proudest accomplishment: True Aggie. Reach Briana at b.bowen@aggiemail.usu.edu.