How many have turned a useless degree into a career?

Lol!!! Mine was majoring in English and Philosophy...with an honours in English.

I have turned it into a viable career...but only by doing another 4 years of study...so I guess I cheated!!!


Well done, Mags.

that's not a major cheat.

Actually, I was, and am, very happy with my first degree.

I think they are worth a lot...though no longer monetarily.

My goddaughter is just getting a degree in sociology and I'm wondering what on earth she's going to do with it.

When I graduated with my hot degree in Fine Art and Art History (with a focus on the Pre-Raphaelites), I was recruited by brokerages, publishing houses and marketing companies. They all said the same thing - anyone with a liberal arts degree can usually keep a conversation going, write a decent letter and think outside of the box. They could train me in anything else. They were right. What they did teach me became useful when I combined it with my art training to start my garden design company. Not as lucrative as Wall Street, but I sleep well at night.

Scholastic Philosophy here.
I'm now a software engineer.

sounds like you've done fabulously with art history....perhaps there are no "useless" degrees. I have a friend who got a degree in ballet who is working successfuly in education. You are right about the liberal arts.

My wife's BIL studied Spanish and Russian, wrote his PhD about the reception of a certain German author in the USSR .... and is now CEO of the international IT-branch of one of the largest European insurers (and his book is still considered to be THE major work about that subject).

Well, I had dinner the other night with a friend of many years who has managed to turn hers into a decent academic career, with really useful research into birth practices, that is really challenging the medical hierarchy and current practice in Australia.

She's been in Vietnam, Cambodia and Laos researching things there, is running several international studies, and may be taking herself off to east Timor, top teach there, when her youngest is through year 12 at the end of next year.

Sociology is a degree that can turn out really useful researchers and policy developers, though parties with them en masse drive me mad.

Sociology was one of the most interesting studies I did as part of my social work degree.

well, my goddaughter is a smart woman, so she may do well. She doesn't have ambitions beyond being a "barista" in a coffee shop right now.

Barista was one of my daughter's first jobs.
Now she's working a a PhD in bio-chem.

Almost the same. Philosophy of Law here. Now I'm an IT Reporting Analyst.

All the people who did 'dishwashing' or specimen processing in the labs for me turned out swell. One got a phD in biochem from cal tech, one got an m.d./practices in Beverly Hills, one went into tv and newspaper news as anchor and then columnist, and I'm probably forgetting some, ah, yes, another is a dentist, or was last I heard.

I, on the other hand (B.A., bacteriology), didn't go on in school for reasons having to do with life and money until I was thirty, when I took a zillion studio art courses at night for pleasure, and then when I was forty, when I took a zillion landscape architecture courses... well, not really for profit, but for a satisfying work to do.
Land arch turns out to combine landscape art/design and technical aspects, and was something I never heard of when I was twenty-one. I don't regret any of the explorations.

I had no idea such a degree existed.

That sounds like such a great thing to do for a living.

Some of us turned a useless degree into a useless career!

It is, George, in many ways. I do now realize I didn't really answer the original question, in that I didn't turn that degree into another career, except that I think it was required to have a 4 yr. degree at the time to get into the landarch program.

I had to take classes of that, when I studied law (and did the same just because of pure and sheer laziness when studying social work).

BU offered Philosophy concentrations in '83. Law was one; I think Ethics was another and there was a third but I've forgotten what it was. I don't think they offer them any more, it's just straight Philosophy.