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My brother is changing majors from Molecular Biology to Philosophy
Giggles_Funsworth
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So my brother is a good kid, he is 19 now, just finished his first semester of college, landed in an Honors Program at San Diego State University doing Molecular Biology, full ride scholarship.
He posted on Facebook today saying that he'd decided to change his major and that his parents were surprisingly supportive. I asked him what to and he said Philosophy, I didn't dismiss this offhand because from what I've read about them in the past Philosophy degrees are much more in demand then their stereotype would lead you to believe. I asked him what he wanted to do with it and he said he wanted to be a teacher!
Uh...
This seems like a horrible idea to me, I am an American and everything I've heard about teaching lately is that it's terribly hard to find steady work most places, much less get tenure.
Am confused by the parental support, need to call my dad, they shut down aspirations of a Music major (because really? and a double Molecular Biology/Music major because nobody could ever do that much work at one time and his GPA has to stay above a certain level to keep the aid. Also, I'm not sure if he's considered whether or not his scholarships will transfer to a Philosophy degree, they didn't in the case of switching from Molecular Biology to Music, and he thought that was a great idea.
A month ago he was pretty excited about Molecular Biology, and wanted to do Genetic Research.
I am worried about him and projecting more than a little because I made some questionable student loan decisions when I was his age that I am still reaping the consequences of (almost 25 now). Mine aren't near as bad as what his will be if he tries to go down this road without significant financial aid though.
It doesn't help assuage that when I asked him what he was doing he said he didn't have his whole life planned out, and he's just a Freshman in College, but he's following God's lead and if he hangs on for the ride he'll be just fine because gee whiz Jesus! I asked him how he knew this is what God wants him to do and he said that he prays to him and God talks back and "The road may be foggy, but he knows it well enough that I don't need to see more than what is right in front of my face." WTF does that last part even mean, these are not the words of a person who is thinking things through well holy shit.
Am terribly afraid that my step mom is influencing this (she is a snakes and tongues Christian), and my dad is more willing to go for the "God is telling me to do this." vibe than "I feel like Philosophy will be a super rad thing to learn about and WAY more useful than Molecular Biology." due to his background as an ex-Pastor (Western Baptist). He is usually very rational and his decisions are not colored too heavily by his religion, I don't even understand how he's so heavy into the Religion honestly, though the step-mom does weird things to his judgement.
I've already gone back and forth with him on Facebook a little bit, and I'm already the black sheep atheist brother who lives with his girlfriend and drinks alcohol (in moderation, dad has been sober for almost 20 years and we grew up with very harsh views against it) so anything I say is probably going to be chalked up to me not understanding how God's speaking to him since he's gone all religious with this.
For what it's worth my relationship with her isn't great either and is probably coloring this last part.
He posted on Facebook today saying that he'd decided to change his major and that his parents were surprisingly supportive. I asked him what to and he said Philosophy, I didn't dismiss this offhand because from what I've read about them in the past Philosophy degrees are much more in demand then their stereotype would lead you to believe. I asked him what he wanted to do with it and he said he wanted to be a teacher!
Uh...
This seems like a horrible idea to me, I am an American and everything I've heard about teaching lately is that it's terribly hard to find steady work most places, much less get tenure.
Am confused by the parental support, need to call my dad, they shut down aspirations of a Music major (because really? and a double Molecular Biology/Music major because nobody could ever do that much work at one time and his GPA has to stay above a certain level to keep the aid. Also, I'm not sure if he's considered whether or not his scholarships will transfer to a Philosophy degree, they didn't in the case of switching from Molecular Biology to Music, and he thought that was a great idea.
A month ago he was pretty excited about Molecular Biology, and wanted to do Genetic Research.
I am worried about him and projecting more than a little because I made some questionable student loan decisions when I was his age that I am still reaping the consequences of (almost 25 now). Mine aren't near as bad as what his will be if he tries to go down this road without significant financial aid though.
It doesn't help assuage that when I asked him what he was doing he said he didn't have his whole life planned out, and he's just a Freshman in College, but he's following God's lead and if he hangs on for the ride he'll be just fine because gee whiz Jesus! I asked him how he knew this is what God wants him to do and he said that he prays to him and God talks back and "The road may be foggy, but he knows it well enough that I don't need to see more than what is right in front of my face." WTF does that last part even mean, these are not the words of a person who is thinking things through well holy shit.
Am terribly afraid that my step mom is influencing this (she is a snakes and tongues Christian), and my dad is more willing to go for the "God is telling me to do this." vibe than "I feel like Philosophy will be a super rad thing to learn about and WAY more useful than Molecular Biology." due to his background as an ex-Pastor (Western Baptist). He is usually very rational and his decisions are not colored too heavily by his religion, I don't even understand how he's so heavy into the Religion honestly, though the step-mom does weird things to his judgement.
I've already gone back and forth with him on Facebook a little bit, and I'm already the black sheep atheist brother who lives with his girlfriend and drinks alcohol (in moderation, dad has been sober for almost 20 years and we grew up with very harsh views against it) so anything I say is probably going to be chalked up to me not understanding how God's speaking to him since he's gone all religious with this.
For what it's worth my relationship with her isn't great either and is probably coloring this last part.
TL;DR: My brother currently has a full ride scholarship in an honors program studying Molecular Biology, he wanted to do genetic research with it. Now he is saying that he wants to get a Philosophy degree so that he can teach because God is telling him to, and my dad and step-mom are supportive of this even though it might mean taking out HUGE student loans. This is a terrible idea right?
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One of the weird things about being an adult is that if it's not illegal to do it, you're allowed to do it, and nobody really has any right to stop you unless it somehow affects them. Since it's not your life, it doesn't affect you, so it's not really your call.
I don't really care if there is as much chance for success under his new course of action, if there are actually decent odds of him being able to be a teacher with a philosophy degree and pay off his debts I am okay with that! On the other hand, if this is in fact as moonbat crazy as I suspect it is, I would like to do my best to street him down a better path as his older brother that he continues to look up to for reasons that elude me.
I am looking for advice on how good of a decision this is and how to convey that information in a way that will get around "God is telling me to do this." Not a rather condescending bit about how I should just watch him fail because he's an adult now.
Where is the crossover in class load? I'm looking at requirements at my school and I don't see much or anything at all. He's looking at probably an extra 40-50 in reality.
Honestly, I'd leave the guy alone and let him major in what he wants. It's his life.
The most you're going to be able to do here is tell them you think its a bad idea, but I wouldnt worry too much about the God angle - its just a convenient dodge that your folks will accept. I've seen the same stuff happen to all the people who just KNEW they were going to be doctors...until they found out that it involved passing Organic Chemistry..and suddenly...BOOM...GODTOWN....God says, "GO FORTH MY CHILD, AND EARN YOUR PSYCH DEGREE!!!"
You'd think that with accreditation there would be more parity between degrees.
It's best not to think about how many colleges I went too before I got a degree.
I would approach it from the angle of getting both degrees just to hedge his bets and ensure he can get a job out of college. As a side note, he'll probably need an advanced degree to get anywhere with molecular bio as well.
Has he got any experience of philosophy before, or does he have the option to sit in on a few to see if he likes it?
On the other hand, a Philosophy degree is as good as any other generic liberal arts degree, and in fact it's generally a bit better because the critical reasoning/writing skills it teaches you are at least useful compared to, say, all the worthless shit you learn as a PoliSci major or something. He's not throwing his life away by swapping majors as a freshman (although if his scholarship doesn't transfer he's probably making a really big mistake).
My best advice would be to tell him to take some philosophy classes to make sure he likes it. It's probably just a phase.
That being said, your brother is an adult, and can make his own decisions. You should really sit down with him, talk to him about your concerns, explain that Molecular Biology, while way more difficult, is a much better degree for a career path. There is nothing that says you can't teach with a Molecular Biology degree (in fact, you can teach more with a Molecular Biology degree than with a Philosophy degree). Ask him if he's looked into double-majoring. Explain that you feel you made some mistakes when you were his age, and you're just trying to help him avoid making similar ones, because you're concerned for him.
And then, tell him that whatever he decides, he is an adult, and you'll support him in his decision. You did what you could to help, but trying to fight him on something like this that he's determined to do is just going to make him more obstinate, and make your relationship with him worse.
Also, to Tycho's post above: Philosophy Majors have a 20% higher unemployment rate than Political Science majors; but hey, that's okay, I understand. Unlike Political Science, Philosophy doesn't have a statistics requirement, so I'm happy to explain it to you.
edit: yeah, you can major in Political Science at SDSU without ever taking one statistics course.
6.0% * 120% = 7.2%
He will probably have to take some kind of general humanities classes anyways, so he might as well take a philosophy class to see if trying to decipher Kant will be as fun as he thinks it will be. Spoiler warning - it probably won't be.
So, I guess the advice would be "make sure you enjoy every aspect of it more than what you're doing now". Especially since the only direct application of Philosophy that seems to exist is teaching, which will inevitably require a Masters (if you're lucky) or a PhD. But then a humanities major by itself can be useful in the general sense of a 4-year degree being useful.
Although if there weren't a scholarship involved, I'd recommend what every freshman really should do: take a bunch of classes that pique your interest from a wide swath of subjects and then develop the one you enjoy the most (even if it is the most difficult). Science-based degrees tend to be more immediately applicable to the workforce; humanities wil make you have to battle every other humanities major for general, "this job needs a 4-year degree because a 4-year degree is the new HS diploma" jobs for anything outside your immediate experience.
That being said if he really doesn't like biology, there's no margin in sticking it out for 4+ years to get a degree in a field he's uninterested in working in. Better to figure that out as a freshman than have an existential crisis three years into the program.
that's why we call it the struggle, you're supposed to sweat
I'll call my dad tonight and find out what they actually told him, figure out what's going on when not distorted through my brother's bias, he lives kind of in his own world a lot of the time.
As far as I know, he has no previous exposure to Philosophy coursework. It's POSSIBLE he had an intro course last semester, but if he did it was his first exposure as I'm almost positive he didn't get any in high school at the fundie private Christian school he went to, especially not the way it's going to be taught in a secular university.
I'll advise him to look into taking a few elective courses in Philosophy to see if he still enjoys it from a more in depth perspective, and look into doubling up if it's still something he wants to learn a lot about to improve his employability. Already strongly suspected that his new interest in Philosophy had to do with the difficulty of the coursework, as he was struggling last semester, though his GPA was almost up where it needed to be to stay in the Honors program and keep the scholarship, and a lot of it was adjusting to the learning curve of what was expected going to college versus what was expected in high school where he could just coast at everything.
If he's just not interested in the sciences anymore than that's cool, I am behind whatever makes him happy, but that is not the impression he gave me just a month ago, not that that could change.
His lack of clear, rational reasoning would probably also be a major issue in Philosophy, however. Pro-religious philosophical arguments will be held to a harsher standard.
A huge amount of students change their majors, it's normal. He probably shouldn't go with either of these two options though.
It probably depends on exactly how the majors are constructed, but it is more than likely possible to be a "double major" for a year and then decide which one he likes better and just drop the other major. In most cases the core curriculum plus the major does not equal enough credits to graduate. I've ended up with a bunch of extra science and english classes simply because I wasn't interested in anything else. There is no reason those extra classes at the the end can't be philosophy.
Also, I bet that he will encounter the same amount of arguments against christianity as a molecular bio major as he would as a philosophy major. The arguments will just come from different angles.
That being said, it's his choice...it's his life...better him being stuck in a lowish paying job than a job he hates (or so the motto goes).
Philosophy, if you take it seriously, ends up being descent training for a lot of stuff do to the thinking/reasoning skills as people have said. If you want to teach it specifically, you need an advanced degree probably. Teaching something like high school would probably be differnt though and its not a bad major to do with some education courses like for a minor if he just wants to be a teacher.
Anyway, both Molecular bio and Philosophy are in the same level interets as watching paint dry to me personally, but I can see the merits of both if its what you want to do. I also had to teach labs to freshman science majors and seen alot of, "fuck, this is going to be hard, what else can I major in?" If he just wants to teach though, not really at a specific level, stay with the bio major as I think science teachers are more in demand.
Philosophy sounds like it'll be easy. And if you take a course or two it feels like it'll be easy. And then you'll start actually getting to the point where hey, you're still doing really in depth study of stuff. If it turns out he wants to teach philosophy and he actually really likes it, then no it's not a mistake. Shit, I majored in music history and got a job like, weeks after starting the search. In music. But if he's doing it because he just doesn't like doing work and thinks this is easier, or because he took one class and liked breezing through it, and as soon as he gets to real work he'll explode and want to go back to science? Then yeah, that's a huge mistake if he loses his scholarship and then realizes that he was just being lazy.
Ultimately it's his choice, but I would recommend to him that he go deeper into philosophy without dropping his current program. If he loves it and sticks with it, then that's great. If he goes "Oh shit, what happened to the blow-off course?" and sticks with his current program, then great. There's nothing inherently wrong with majoring in philosophy with the intent to teach.
Then I majored in english.
Then I became an awesome writer.
I'm sure a lot of mechanical engineering students would make awesome engineers in their first year.
That was sarcasm.
Also, make sure the whole God message thing doesn't get too serious, since 19 is about the right age to be receiving special messages from God (i.e. not the religious kind and most certainly the schizophrenic kind) that involve immense life changes and social isolation. We just watched a friend go through it, so I may be projecting a bit.
Right, but he was already struggling with the writing
requirements for his science degree.
I don't think that's the case, he was very vague when I asked how he knew it was what God wanted him to do, and my father is a child and adolescent therapist by trade and a licensed MFT.
Except that those jobs are few and far between and very hard to get.
Seriously, your brother should go look up employment opportunities at each level-bachelor's, master's, and PhD-before he decides. I would say that to anyone interested in majoring in philosophy.
I will say that my roommate was in a nearly identical situation when he started in college. He started in a double major math and computer science program that was a fully ride and got burned out. He switched to Philosophy when he couldn't handle the stress of the program anymore and finished his bachelors. This was prior to me meeting him. We met working in a call center for barely above minimum wage after he got his degree. We've both found better opportunities since then but getting a mindless job after graduating didn't garner respect for the field. He is now working on a masters in management of information systems.
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This might have been a great decision. Architects need to be fervently in love with their discipline to succeed, and are otherwise unemployed (especially in this market).
So he had nearly the same conversation with my brother as I did on Facebook when he talked to him, so their "support" was a little distorted. He'd even brought up the same concerns I did about how marketable a Philosophy degree would make him and the state of teaching careers.
BUT in the time since I'd seen my brother, I guess he's been having trouble in school, and is already down to pass/fail in his math class, so he won't be keeping the scholarship, and since he can't do the math, he needs a new major anyway. He's in an Intro Philosophy class now so that's what drove his newfound "passion".
My dad already told him to actually talk with an advisor to find out what would make him most marketable as a teacher, and between that, what I said already, and him not being able to continue with his current major there's nothing else for me to say. Thanks for all the help guys, this can be locked or whatever.