As someone who went to a liberal arts school, I feel your pain. I managed to 90% minor in four disciplines, 80% major in another two, and really only complete 100% of one. I'm totally well-rounded.

For me, it was the "Life Stuff" that got me when I entered the real world. Stuff about leases, credit cards, car issues, budgeting, and personal decision-making.

Sure, I could have gone to the Seniors Seminars that were hosted the last two weeks before graduation, but I was too busy driving back and forth to DC to prep for my new job in between exams.

Most employers actually expect you to learn things on the job because most jobs for undergraduates, whether it be marketing, financial analysis, PR, etc. are a combination of common sense and knowledge about the industry / how the company works. Albeit engineering is very different, I figured that you weren’t going to pursue that =P.

The value of a broad undergraduate degree is that it teaches you how to think from many different perspectives. Most interviews don’t test for specific technical knowledge, but rather how you approach problems and handle situations. Don’t worry too much! Anyway, I think you’ll get enough depth once you get into your major :). If you still feel like you're not prepared for the job that you want, it never hurts to do a little outside reading.

Aman,

You raise some excellent questions that I hear often as a Career Counselor at a large university (and wondered myself not long ago as a liberal arts student myself). Meg touched on this a little already (great points, by the way), but one important thing that liberal arts major gain, above all else, is critical thinking skills. You are going to be exposed to quite a few different ways of thinking in various fields. Being able to sort through them, make sense of them, and critically analyze them is truly a skill. You will begin train and grasp it more over time, though I am sure now it doesn't seem as "practical" as some other majors. But, employers value critical thinking. I hear it from them often. They value a broad perspective on the world and the world of work. It's important to have critical thinking in your set of employable tools - especially in an economy like this. You need to be able to tell the doomsday theories from reality, and also lead the charge with new ideas rooted in sound logic.

When you're feeling lost in liberal arts mania, keep this in mind - there are tons of liberal arts graduates who are out there, employed, and doing well. You will no doubt be one of them soon!

Kevin

I'm not sure the liberal arts education is as important as your previous knowledge and curiosities. If you were an intelligent person with critical thinking skills and a curiosity and thirst to learn more about many topics, than you will succeed both in a liberal arts education but also apply those skills when you leave school. I'm not sure someone can be 'taught' those things. I'd say your major is more important for preparing you for life after college rather than the kind of education your college provides. If you are intelligent with problem solving skills, you will have an advantage on those who don't in the work place. But if your major is useless to what you are doing, or to anything, that is going to hold you back.

I was a history major who went on to get an M.A. in history. What did that prepare me to do? Almost anything (that didn't require technical experience).

Why? Because my education developed skills that include planning, research, critical thinking, writing, editing, project management, and time management. And that doesn't count skills that I developed through extracurricular activities, such as writing newscasts for radio, teamwork, leadership, etc.

The real problem isn't that it doesn't prepare you for anything. The real problem is that it's hard to limit your options. And yet I still found a job (even in an economic downturn--it just took a while) that became a career, and then moved on to another career in a seemingly different but still skill-based line of work.

Oh, and I'm also a Jeopardy champion. Interestingly enough, that has actually been useful at work, even though it doesn't directly apply to what I do.

Although I typically look down upon liberal arts+crafts majors, I'm fairly certain the only thing that matters is that you perform well in your major and learn skills outside your major. It sounds like you've managed to do that. Now, if someone is only majoring in liberal arts because they're an intellectual lightweight and they don't feel like accomplishing anything, then yes, that degree is useless.

I think the most important thing to glean from your educational experience is that the overarching analytical and communication skills you developed are what are going to get you a position, not the trivial information you picked up in your sociology courses. Like Meg said, though: that information will come in handy as you meet new people during your job search.

Also, any company taking on a new employee, whether a fresh graduate or a 10-year industry veteran, understands that there will always be a learning curve for that person to climb that's specific to the individual company and it's products/services and corporate culture.

AND! You're only halfway through your college career. Frequent your school's career center and start talking to people about your options and what interests you. Get a move on finding out what's available in the real world and you'll get a much better picture of where your degree is applicable. Your concern and curiosity now are signs that you're way ahead of the curve!

Fortunately, no one coming out of undergrad studies is an expert.

College is a lot like a job. You get what you put in, and you tend to find what you expect.

I don't know. In today's economy, employers seem to want experience and knowledge about the job they want done.... not a jeopardy superstar.

Employers are looking for experience, but the experience they are looking for are not contained by your college degree. They are contained by the actions you take while pursuing your degree. No matter what degree you pursue you best bet to find a job after college is to find real world [read: jobs, internships, externships, and leadership position] experiences to supplement your education.

I also think Allison above made some pretty good points.

Finally, for those who think business degrees are automatically more "concrete" are kidding themselves. They can and do face the same challenges when finding their first job that LA students do.

I might have responded to another post in hits but many of my friends with liberal arts degrees are employed in journalism, marketing and advertising, some are managing restaurants, some are buying properties and starting a sound real estate portfolio. It may be that they were just going to be successful anyway, but most are quite happy with their degree considering the fact that a lot of their friends with business degrees are out of work or doing things they really do not want to so. I think your education is more about you and who you are and how you use it.

I've never worked in a field specific to either of my degrees though I'm hoping my grad degree will be helpful to my future careers, and I imagine my careers will be many I feel critical thinking is helpful for any number of career choices and I think some employers see this as well.

Thanks for all the great feedback above! It's tiresome when your taking a lot of (dare I say) random classes and you have no idea how the classes will be helpful in the future. It is relieving to hear about other individuals who took a liberal arts curriculum and are doing well.

I'm going to hit up the career center as others have mentioned above. It never even hit me to try going and looking up people who have the same degree as me, and seeing what they're doing.

Thanks for taking time to read my post and offer advice.

I think to summarise what everyone else is saying here is there's a lot of "transferable skills" that can be utilised from having a liberal arts degree so fear not for your degree is not going to make you any less employable.

If you don't know what you want to do yet, having a liberal arts degree might not be as bad as you think it is. It's definitely not useless. You should be able to branch out to different fields which is where transferable skills become very important.

Having a lot of work experiences and part time job is the most valuable thing you could do for yourself right now. It's really not about the money when you're still studying but when you graduate, think of all the things you could put down in your resume. Employer likes seeing work experiences (if any) from prospective graduate recruit. It shows that you have a proactive approach and that counts for a lot in recruiting graduates.

Just remember to not get overwhelmed with work and forgot to study for exams. I knew I did that once.
Priority for studying is of course still more important than work when you're in college. I learnt that the hard way.

Building on Daniel's comments, you must also think of the flip side.

Let me give a few examples. My brother, for whom math is very easy, studied engineering in college. He wasn't able to take many electives at Purdue and went through the motions to get his degree. He was "learning" things for four years that were already largely intuitive to him. He now looks back and wishes he could have expanded his horizons a bit and learned more about history, sociology, et al from some of the foremost authorities.

I have another friend who grew up around computers and decided to study computer science. While his degree certainly helped him get a job, he claims he wouldn't need it to do what he does. He feels that he didn't really learn anything in college.

Anyway, people of all academic backgrounds sometimes feel they studied the wrong thing--or that they didn't learn anything at all. (I don't actually think the latter is true.) What's important, to steal a page out of a Thomas Friedman book, is that you know how to learn. Most people will end up doing something in their career that is, at best, tangentially related to their college major. If you know how to learn you can pick up necessary skills along the way. A liberal arts education can be very useful in this respect.

I think it's great you are thinking about this as a sophomore, but you still have 2 years of more specialized education to go. I wouldn't worry too much. You will pick up more and more skills and hone the ones you already have. Liberal arts degrees are great, but they have to be used creatively when looking for a job or career.

I think the best aspect of a liberal arts education is the freedom it gives you to explore your interests. While the development of critical thinking isn't exclusive to liberal arts majors, I think the problem with curricula like engineering and business is that they have too many requirements which leave little time for exploration.

When most people think about liberal arts they think of English lit or History. I personally majored in math, and took a bunch of courses in Japanese, CS and Econ as my electives. Having a diverse background really helped in interviews because I can always find an angle to build rapport with the interviewer. I remember a particular instance where I was interviewing for a programming position with a Wall Street firm, and I didn't do too well on the technical portion because the interviewer was a specialist in databases, which is something I don't know a lot about. But I managed to build rapport because I offhandedly mentioned a book I just read when he asked me what my hobbies were, and it sparked off a half hour discussion about the nature of risk and the limits of historical sampling. I was able to hold an intelligent conversation because I took courses like probability and game theory back in college. (Which has nothing to do with the job in question) It gave me an extra chance to show him that I'm smart and knowledgeable. I ended up getting an offer the very next day.

If you've already chosen that route though, then here's my advice:

-get an internship that is in a field you want to work
-pick up a career-oriented minor
-do all the same-old job things that all graduates do, just more of them (network, resume building, etc...)
-pick up some career-oriented classes that give you "marketable skills". Those are basically any kind of skill that you actually have to learn and are useful to employers (web design, computer repair, accounting, etc...)

As someone who was an English major undergrad and a Communications major for grad, and then has worked for nearly 40 years, I would like to convey what my experience has taught me is he source problem.

It's all about telling the truth to prospective and current university students.

What truth?

1. It is simply that liberal arts majors (English, Philosophy, Sociology, etc.) are not gong to be taught skills which will immediately -- or maybe even never -- get them a job paying a middle- to upper-class income.

2. If you choose to major in any of the liberal arts, you will need to obtain specific skill sets after college to make you competitive for a middle- to upper-class income. In my day, it was word processing and desk top publishing. Today, it's IT skills associated with the Internet.

3. Don't believe college counselors who will earnestly and honestly advise the liberal arts major to get an internship during college, and focus on making connections there. It's an unreliable approach. Some students don't know how to make connections. And some students don't know how o pick an internship that has strong possibilties of providing a job wih a middle-class income. English majors, for example, often gravitate toward Publishing and Public Relations -- notoriusly low paying. If you go that route, you can look forward to years of living with Mom and Dad, having a roommate, and eating pork and beans instead of prime rib.

4. That being said, do major in Liberal Arts if you want to become a cultured, worldy, sophisticated person. You wlll be a person who will have the tools to truly appreciate other cultures if you ever have enough money to travel, and you won't have to be reduced to going on a cruise to Bermuda because you don't know what else to do. You most likely will be able to know which fork and which spoon to use when going out to an elegant dinner. And you won't be lost when going to the Opera. And of course, you will learn how think globally, and think critically, about your own life and the ways of the world.

But you won't get job skills that immediately, or maybe never, provide you with a middle- or upper-class income. You'll have to get more technical skills after college, or marry a doctor, lawyer or engineer.

I only ask that colleges tell the students and their parents the truth that I have just described. Then, they can make decisions about the student's education with some sense of the likely consequences.