What was your college Major?

[PoetPhilosopher]

I understand the attraction to go into things that you find interesting and look at them into more depth. Curiosity and the drive to know more and widen ones horizons is a truly great thing.
I was saying more from a career development perspective. There aren't many people around with a good head for both art and hard programming skills...the marriage of the arts with the machine. I do not know at what stage of career you are in...but felt having formal degrees in both could really get you enormous traction.

There's actually a field that's a marriage of the two. I dabble in it now without a degree. It's something that some call Graphics Programming, and it's where you focus on shaders, lighting, etc.

(I've heard that in some cases, people are even called upon to write small 3D models in code form when necessary, but it's not something I often do)

Anyway, I've done freelance in this field. Usually what I try to do is try to make a shader more efficient without reducing quality, which can sometimes lead to a pretty large increase in frames per second in real-time applications. I feel one of my best results was a time when I took a 3D project, and optimized the shader and geometry of a billboard in the project, and it increased frames per second from about 55 fps to 120.

Usually, a good savings is more like optimizing a whole scene, and only getting a 25-30 fps boost, though.

 

[icehorse]

Cool. I feel my specialty in regards to programming is graphics programming - writing shaders, analyzing performance of shaders (which can be important because the codes can sometimes be run every pixel), etc.

Computer graphics are - imo - fascinating!

 

[Secret Chief]

I think the way they set up PE is dumb, at least it was back in my day. They used to fail kids for not using the locker room... what is the point of that?

That's mentally pointlessly idiotically stupid.

 

[JustGeorge]

That's mentally pointlessly idiotically stupid.

In middle school, I did have a gym teacher break the rules and pass me with a D-...

I started out using the locker room. Then came swimming. I swam the first day... and returned to my locker to find it had been broken into, and my pants were stolen.

So I got to stand around the school in a wet swimming suit while I waited for my dad to bring me a new pair of pants.

I think she understood why I never used the locker room again... She was technically supposed to fail me, but she was a human being. I think the D- kept her from getting into trouble, and it gave me a passing grade(if only by a hair).

 

[Revoltingest]

Started majoring in architecture.
Found it uninteresting.
Switched to math, which was interesting & potentially useful.
Then found mechanical engineering, which is all fun & games.
It's also interesting & useful.

 

[VoidCat]

Im majoring in early childhood education.

 

[sayak83]

Wonder what did Calvin major in?
Calvin and Hobbes by Bill Watterson for August 27, 2023 | GoComics.com

 

[VoidCat]

Im majoring in early childhood education.

Once i get my associates i plan on going for a bach in Interpeting Deaf education and advocacy(IDEA) and going for a bach double major in Special and general ed. Imma go for the IDEA degree first before the double major.

 

[Sand Dancer]

Started with a Bachelor's in Psychology.

Entered a graduate program in Industrial/Organizational Psychology but dropped it after a year because I hated it.

Eventually earned a Master's in Healthcare Administration.

Part of me would like to go back for more; perhaps a Master's in Social Work or doctorate in Psychology? We'll see.

Listen to that part of you.

 

[Sand Dancer]

AA: General Studies
BA: Psychology with a minor in History.
MSW: Social Work with a certificate in Marriage and Family Therapy.
Post MSW job: Mom

 

[Rachel Rugelach]

Mine are: Bachelor's in English Literature; Master's in Library & Information Science.

So I don't get a big head about it, this is one of my favorite jokes about college degrees:

BS stands for Bull ****
MS stands for More ****
PhD stands for Piled High and Deep

 

[The Hammer]

I've got an AA in General Studies (science and math)

An AA in Anthropology (transfer degree)

And I am about to finish my Bachelor's in Archaeology with a Minor in Religious Studies.

 

[John53]

What was your Major in college?

Mine was art. But choosing it as a major was a bit of a waste. I had this false assumption at the time that college would teach me art. But all it taught me was a bit about critical thinking (which I didn't understand well at the time, but stuff I'm able to apply later), as well as a little bit about social science and a little bit about math from the other subjects.

That being said, I don't think I could make it in the career field as an artist. I have a pretty good portfolio, so I actually think I could get "hired" as an artist, but the thing is that once at the job, they'd ask me to do things, and even with any on-job training, I think that I wouldn't know what I was doing, in regards to art.

I didn't finish high school.

 

[Sand Dancer]

Mine are: Bachelor's in English Literature; Master's in Library & Information Science.

So I don't get a big head about it, this is one of my favorite jokes about college degrees:

I wish I had majored in Library Science.

 

[The Hammer]

I wish I had majored in Library Science.

My spouse wants to get her PhD in library science!

 

[Rachel Rugelach]

@Sand Dancer and @The Hammer, here is probably my favorite quote about Library Science graduates:

"Our whole American way of life is a great war of ideas, and librarians are the arms dealers selling weapons to both sides."
-- James Quinn, Reference Librarian, Gonzaga University School of Law

 

[SalixIncendium]

As I've said, higher education isn't for everyone. My late friend Will flunked out of college...but he was one of the smartest and well-read people I've ever known...

And believe me, I've known A LOT of well-educated people who weren't anywhere near as smart or well-read as he was...

I didn't like school. I found it to be boring and repetitive. I found homework to be a complete waste of my time and was interested in other things, like how the world worked and what made people tick, so I would read books and watch documentaries instead of doing homework. This led to mediocre grades in classes where homework was part of the grade even though I aced most of my tests. Therefore my GPA in high school was less than stellar, so no grants or scholarships.

Nonetheless, I was fascinated by math and science, so having squandered any chance of attending a university, I took a couple of courses in a local community college. Trig and something science related that escapes me. I found it to be more of the same, boring, repetitive work that I encountered in high school, so I found my time to be better served spending additional time at work. A good choice as it turns out, as I spent much of my working years in a lucrative career in management.

The only time not having a degree affected me was when a new CEO took over our franchise group where I had climbed the corporate ladder to senior district manager. He was apparently big on college degrees. He reviewed the education of this upper management team found that I had only a high school diploma. Several months later, I was training two new district managers (who had business degrees, of course) who I thought at the time were being put in place to open my path to a recently vacated director of operations position, but as it turns out, while they were my replacements, the CEO filled the DO spot externally (with someone from BK corp that I had thrown out of one of my stores for making a manager cry) and trumped up some unattainable action plan on metrics to fire me. Even with that, out of the four unattainable metrics they put in the plan, I only fell short on one.

 

[PureX]

I wish I had majored in Library Science.

A greatly diminishing field, these days. As libraries are going the way of Blockbuster Video. And for mostly the same reasons.

 

[PureX]

There you go. I've gone to some continuing lectures and classes through Osher, so that's provided an outlet. Otherwise I read on my own. I used to write a fair amount, but I lost my muse and haven't written anything in quite a while.

Your muse got sick of you exploiting it's creativity and is now out bad-mouthing you to all the other writers. You should write a story about that ... just to get even with it.

 

[anna.]

Your muse got sick of you exploiting it's creativity and is now out bad-mouthing you to all the other writers. You should write a story about that ... just to get even with it.

I wish it was that easy, haha. I just have to wait for that train to come barreling at me from over the landscape.

Elizabeth Gilbert on poet Ruth Stone, talking about when Stone "was growing up in rural Virginia, she would be out, working in the fields and she would feel and hear a poem coming at her from over the landscape. It was like a thunderous train of air and it would come barrelling down at her over the landscape. And when she felt it coming . . . ‘cause it would shake the earth under her feet, she knew she had only one thing to do at that point. That was to, in her words, “run like hell” to the house as she would be chased by this poem.

The whole deal was that she had to get to a piece of paper fast enough so that when it thundered through her, she could collect it and grab it on the page. Other times she wouldn’t be fast enough, so she would be running and running, and she wouldn’t get to the house, and the poem would barrel through her and she would miss it, and it would “continue on across the landscape looking for another poet.”

And then there were these times, there were moments where she would almost miss it. She is running to the house and is looking for the paper and the poem passes through her. She grabs a pencil just as it’s going through her and she would reach out with her other hand and she would catch it. She would catch the poem by its tail and she would pull it backwards into her body as she was transcribing on the page. In those instances, the poem would come up on the page perfect and intact, but backwards, from the last word to the first."