Reddit mentions of Smart Moves for Liberal Arts Grads: Finding a Path to Your Perfect Career

Hey Rhyan! Thanks for the like.

I like the "applied theory" part of therapy, and much of good therapy theory and practice could be written by a good Stoic (although contemporary therapy has the advantage of empirically supported techniques). So I definitely consider therapy to be an applied sort of philosophy -- philosophy in the old sense, when it was more about how to live your life not just in a narrow ethical sense. But what I really like the most about therapy is what the emotionally-focused therapy (a school of therapy) folks call emotion coaching, which involves working with clients in managing, accessing, and understanding their emotions -- and not just in a theoretical sense, but a very felt shared moment sense involving lots of attunement to the client in terms of noticing nonverbal expression and working from there in a felt sense. There is an incredible art here where the canvas is another person's emotion.

Philosophy is usually small enough as a major to tack onto many other majors. I was a major in psychology with a double minor in philosophy and writing, and think if you really know how to "sell" your transferable skills in an interview, you can really impress folks with your background in philosophy given that it provides skills of critical thinking, constructive argument, abstract reasoning, and so on. Unless you're planning on going into the competitive field of being a philosophy professor, I see philosophy as a major or minor like a base drink you mix with other drinks but don't drink by itself, meaning I wouldn't recommend majoring in it by itself, not because you won't be employable (there's a whole book which debunks the myth that liberal arts fields like English and Philosophy can't be very useful majors for finding jobs, like Smart Moves for Liberal Arts Grads -- and fwiw, I did just over a year of career counseling before moving to the personal side, and love both but the latter more).

Just feckin' read, man. That's what I say. I'd actually say, having two degrees, that one of the biggest aids has been not so much the books we've read but knowing how to find the right books. In my field this means looking for certain publishers (e.g., Routledge, Guilford), which publish the heavy stuff meant for therapists rather than the self-help stuff that too many shrinks read which is really meant for their clients. Don't get me started.

FWIW, I was an English major for a semester, and found it was really a covert history major given that it focused so much on the context of the authors of the great literature and not as much as I'd hoped on literature itself. I have absolutely no regrets not majoring in English, and think it in no way has limited my ability to appreciate and interpret literature. I'd recommend considering a minor in writing instead -- you'll likely get your fix by taking English classes but get a super duper good transferable skill when it comes to the market. I loved the hell out of my writing minor, partly because it combined so many areas, like critical theory writing, philosophical writing, fiction writing, and technical writing, linguistics, and grammar. But you follow your bliss, as Joseph Campbell says.

And when you do get to college, the very first week I'd recommend calling your career services department and seeing if you can take the Strong Interest Inventory or other inventories, just to see what might fit your interests and personality.

Don't think that majoring in English is a limitation. I've done research on this as part of my career counseling job, and the percentage of people who major in English and Business who end up getting jobs out of college is small (around 5-10%), and can easily be explained by the fact that English majors usually don't know how to "sell" their transferable skills from their major, of which there are many (and what most people don't know is that according to NACE, the National Association of Colleges and Employees, employers consistently look for the top skills which are provided by non-major classes like electives and required courses), whereas being a Business major means this is part of the game. I'm just saying that English isn't as Englishy as you might suspect given the focus on historical context and other extra-literature variables. But if you're planning on teaching English or going into either for graduate level work, I think majoring in it with philosophy could be super impressive.