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Going to College pt. 2 (SOLVED.)
Clawshrimpy
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So, I had decided to Major in Japanese. However, I am stumped as far as a minor goes. I really have no idea what I want to learn in college. Background: I'm terrible in Math, but solid everwhere else, especially when it comes to Science. the only thing stopping me from Majoring into something like Biology is that I simply want to learn Japanese, and well, I really, REALLY don't wanna have to go chasing the light in a tunnel called the Doctorate Degree. that, and, since I'm disabled, I really don't wanna be a doctor, and the application for "Scientist" these days is low. So I figured, I may as well go to College jsut for the sake of going to College, and learning Japanese for the sake of learning Japanese. I know I can't make money off of it, but I just want to go to College for the sake of learning.
I had started a thread on this before, but everyone dogpiled me for majoring in Japanese. Some of it contined anti-Japan sentiment. No more of that, please?
I had started a thread on this before, but everyone dogpiled me for majoring in Japanese. Some of it contined anti-Japan sentiment. No more of that, please?
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See how many books I've read so far in 2010
The only time a minor would come in handy would be if you decided to make a career adjustment to something slightly outside your field, and while competing for a new job you could demonstrate how that minor was directly relevant to the new field.
A minor just says, "Yeah, I took a bunch of classes about that."
Are you talking minors, or specializations/tracks/etc? Because different programs have different names for required sections of classes within a major, but I've never heard of such a thing as a minor requirement.
Well, a minor was a little more indepth than two extra classes at my University, but I assume this varies from place to place. I few more classes and I could have had a double major.
But yeah, I've never heard of a Minor being required for anything. However, a minor can be handy for later education, I went to grad school based on what I studied in my minor instead of my major, for example.
I don't know that a Japanese major is going to provide you with a lot of job skills or prep you for any work besides translation or going overseas to teach ESL? Given that, I would use a minor to get some skills or background that would do well for you in the workforce. I don't know if its possible, but minoring in business might be a good idea, or some computer courses. While Learning for the sake of learning is fun, at the end of the day school is expensive and when you graduate you need a plan for the future, so mixing in some practical stuff with your pure academia would be prudent.
When I started at University I didn't really know what I wanted to study, so I took a wide variety of introductory courses in my first year. However, I did that more than ten years ago when my tuition was dirt cheap and I had no student loans. If you're willing to accept that this might prolong your stay at University by a year or so and incur the related costs, I'd suggest you do this as well, take intro courses for things that interest you.
Communications majors were required to have a minor in another discipline where I went to school, but that's probably because a communications major is bs.
It would perhaps be a good idea to minor in something that will offer some career synergy with the language, perhaps business, economics, sociology or political sci.
IOS Game Center ID: Isotope-X
Uh.
Proficiency in an uncommon language, especially a business language like Japanese, is a marketable skill.
Yep. Definitely jobs to be had.
I would suggest you minor or double major in bussiness, as that will complement your japanese skills as far as job hunting is concerned.
If you want to learn Japanese, take a year off from college and go to a language school in Japan. Go to a real language school, one aimed at getting young Koreans and Chinese into university. If you can manage it you'll probably be good to go for JLPT2, and if you studied diligently JLPT1.
Japanese can open up a lot of jobs, but it needs to be paired with something that there's demand for. An engineer with 2-3 years experience working with semiconducters will have no problem finding work. You could work as a contract or patent lawyer if you go through law school. The market has largely dried up, but there used to be a lot of IT jobs that will probably return once the market gets better. If you love languages, TESL is another solid career choice.
It might help to think about it this way. Most people leave college with only a single skill, be it Engineering or Japanese. If you can manage to graduate with two (Japanese + α), you'll have a big advantage over a lot of people looking to start their careers.
Sure, this is true, if you're fluent. The ratio of language majors to people who use it fluently in a business context is very high, and simply majoring in a language won't guarantee you'll be good enough at it to market it, and the Japanese economy and population is shrinking by the day. Hence, I played the odds with my advice.
I'd go with chinese if you're concerned with the 20-year + term. I'd also immerse yourself ASAP.
Otherwise you will end up broke and depressed.
While it would definitely be great to go into college knowing exactly what you want to do and seeing that goal to completion, it is not realistic to expect everybody who graduates high school to make that kind of decision and stick to it. I'd say you're just as likely to end up being miserable sticking with something you don't actually like just to get a career out of it.
Instead of picking a job and studying what you think you need for that job, study what you want to study and think about careers that will put what you learn to use. As long as you care about what you're doing and don't tool around for four years, you should be able to find opportunities doing something that interests you. The humanities are frequently mocked for being useless, but there are plenty of humanities majors who find rewarding work. And as far as humanities degrees go, Japanese is far from the least practical.
Edit: Also majoring in something isn't signing your life away. If you have trepidations about going in studying Japanese, remember you can always change it to something more obviously practical after a year or two. Just pay attention and don't get complacent in a program you're not sure about.
DO NOT MAJOR IN JAPANESE if you want to do anything other than data entry with your life. The reason is that first of all, your degree in Japanese (unless you end up at Indiana University or similar) is unlikely to give you the kind of proficiency you would need to get employment based on that alone.
SECOND, and this is really important, it doesn't matter if you speak another language if you have no other knowledge to offer. If you're getting a job on your language merits alone, you are probably translating or interpreting. Interpreters, and to a lesser extent translators because they have the luxury of being able to use a dictionary), cannot stop to look things up. They need solid knowledge of the jargon they're working with in whatever field. Nobody needs a Japanese major, but they do need people with training or education in a given field who happen to speak Japanese.
Third, everyone and their sick little monkey is taking Japanese right now. It's popular, perhaps moreso than it was even 5 years ago, and that makes it quite competitive. Knowing Japanese probably won't actually be worth too much without an actual career path.
Fourth, unless you are actively using that language all the time, and I do mean all the time, you will lose it. It's said, but it's true. And then once you've lost it, you essentially have a degree in nothing, and unless you have a particular gift for languages it can be very difficult to get back.
I appreciate that your interest is in Japanese, nevertheless my recommendation to you is this: MINOR in Japanese. You will get just as many courses in the actual language, I promise you. If you like science, pick the specialization you enjoy the most and go for that as your major. You don't need a doctorate to get a job, and believe it or not disabled people can be scientists too, as long as they understand what they're doing and can do the work. You will find the most eccentric people you'll ever meet trucking away in front of a set of test tubes or a microscope in some pharmaceutical company's basement. If that doesn't float your boat, business is also a good option, and a major in business with a minor in Japanese can probably take you really far... less so the other way around. It is also worth noting that there is little in the world more demanding of people skills than interpretation.
It's true that people will tell you that you can write your own ticket just by knowing the language, but.. well.. they're wrong, unless you have a TON of drive to go into business for yourself or chase down the elusive job where none of this is the case. You may think you don't care about your career now, but someday you will either want to be self-sufficient or need to be able to make your own money. You'll wish you had taken the degree that would make you more employable.
I say all this as the proud holder of a BA in Japanese Language and squat to show for it 3 years later. I am now a Cell and Molecular Biology major, and if I do well in this my prospects couldn't be better. I wish someone had told me that a degree in Japanese would be so very very useless, instead of telling me "wow, you'll be able to write your own ticket!". I wouldn't have listened, but at least I would have been able to look back and say "I should have listened to that bastard who tried to crush my dreams."
I'm really surprise people seem to be skipping over this part.
You must have money, cause going to college to learn Japanese, like Ceres so wonderfully pointed out, isn't going to do jackshit for your prospects. I know this is a stereotype, and I'm sorry if it doesn't apply to you, but so many people seem to have the mentality of "japan=videogames, so I'll learn Japanese!"
And for real, Japan is seriously one of the hardest languages to actually get a grasp on. Save yourself the debt.
Welcome to the help forum. No, people aren't racist, but they'll tell you if you have a wrong idea.
If you are going to college for the sake of going to college and you don't intend to take anything at all away from it then you are wasting SOMEBODY's money. I really hope it's your own. Sorry to be harsh, but you are being given an opportunity here, and it's a lot of money. If you just want to learn Japanese, you should be auditing the language classes.
Learning for the sake of learning is never a waste.
A college degree, no matter in what discipline, is never a waste.
Picking a major based on a career path can be helpful, but many people end up in careers that have nothing to do with their major.
If the OP studies something he's genuinely interested in, he's likely to get better grades. Awesome grades > shitty grades in a relevent field of study.
Furthermore good grades give him a better chance of getting any kind of internship (as long as he can express an interest and some aptitutde in the area, and assuming it's not a science) which will ultimately be more useful towards getting a job than any specific major.
It really doesn't matter if he gets great grades with a major in Japanese. They don't look at your college GPA at Home Depot.
Trust me this kid is not going to be working at Home Depot.
Shogun Streams Vidya
Japanese classes aren't ones to pad out your GPA.
Tell that to my friend with a russian lit degree who's now working as an escort. In an ever-increasingly-competitive economy, having unique and marketable skills are vital. Language if you are fluent might be one of those skills, but if you're not then you're completely screwed, because you've put a lot of your energy into something that won't at all affect your employability.
I assure you that having an ivy league degree doesn't guarantee you anything...
Have you considered looking into classes at a community college or adult learning center? Depending on your area, you can probably find a Japanese class for significantly less than what you'd pay for a college degree that you admit will likely bring you little if any additional money.
While I can't be sure, judging by Clawshrimpy's post history, I don't think Shogun was making reference to him having a better job.
If that's your passion it's not a big deal though. Somebody who really wants to do court interpretation, patent translation or whatever probably can find work if they put the time and effort into studying. It's not something that a typical undergraduate in Japanese can do, and it's too much work unless you're really committed to it, but it is a real career path.
Please note, I am not a Japanese major. I have an equally worthless degree in Political Science. Then again, for the life of me I can't understand the value of a business degree either.
"soft" business classes seem kind of silly, but a quantiative/economics background qualifies you for every job you'd want - the policy stuff is easy to pick up either in the public or private sector, and the math-intensive parts are much easier to master in undergrad than after.
I'd lime everything Ceres said, but I think that might be excessive.
Basically, any degree you obtain from the College of Arts and Sciences from your university is going to be a useless piece of paper. If you don't believe me, ask any of the number of forumers who regret going to school and getting a BA in __________. 95% of them will tell you that they're not even working in that field and that they regret not getting a useful degree in a science/business/engineering field.
Getting a BA in a language, as Ceres said, is dumb unless you're going to back it up with an actual, marketable degree or trade. Double major in Japanese and business... do SOMETHING other than what you're planning on doing.
This.
If you want to take Japanese classes, try looking for courses at your local community college. They offer them for a couple hundred dollars around here. It is greatly preferable to spending tens of thousands on a degree that will land you in the same place.
This drove me to go check said post history. Clawshrimp is apparently one of those people who is obsessed with anime to the max. I think we've all seen a few japanophile students come through college, graduate with a degree in eastern studies or an eastern language, MAYBE teach english for a year, then get to working hard at Officemax and Arby's.
Claw, dude. That degree won't get you a job. It might be fun, and it's true that learning is always an admirable goal. However, that knowledge can be obtained MUCH more cheaply with a minor in it, or by going to a community college for your initial language courses. Going to a University will give you significantly more if you obtain an actual profession there.
This is exactly what I was saying. Even with a degree in Japanese I doubt the kid will ever use it out of fear of working or hiding behind his 'disablement.'
Claw I attend a business college at my university with a mate of mine. He is majoring in international business however he is taking Japanese as well. He's been studying for several years now and he's getting pretty good at Japanese. In Japan he could hold his own in conversations while I could barely keep up with people.
The point is that you do not need to major in something like a language. In fact you don't need to go to school to learn a language. Tipton learned most of his Japanese on his own. He just began taking classes at university this year.
What you seriously need to be looking at is taking care of your first two years of general education requirements. Regardless whatever degree you want the first two years are all gen-ed bullshit. English comp 101, history sequences, science sequences, math sequences etc etc. Usually required in there is a foreign language sequence as well. Mine was two classes and I knocked it out in the first year.
Look into local small colleges. A lot of people hate on community college and a lot of people support it. I loved community college. Wonderful academic experience. Met teachers that changed my life. However I fucking hate univerisity with a seething fury. And I'll tell you right now the rest of the world will not agree with you about your decision any more than the people on this forum. You'll have to deal with academic advisors, teachers, and peer students all telling you the same thing about getting a degree in a language.
Shogun Streams Vidya
yep
the reason he is going to college "just to go to college" is because he has assburgers and lives off disability money from the government.
he's going to use taxpayer money to study anime and manga at a college.
edit: in the last thread he admitted he was comfortable never having a job.
Shogun Streams Vidya
Shogun, you have bested me. Thanks for setting the record straight - I now see why he got the response he did in the previous thread.
Speaking of advisors, teachers, and peer students, to excel at language, it requires immersion in the language. Immersion in Japanese requires that you go to Japan, and thus learning Japanese requires you to engage in intense social interactions in a foreign country (i.e. Japan) which isn't very open socially the way the states is, and is different culturally in a variety of ways.
Unless you have such a mild case of asperger's that you shouldn't be collecting disability, I can't see this going well; people without any disabilities in countries less rough than Japan often have very tough study abroad experiences in terms of feeling socially or linguistically isolated.
Be realistic. Not fatalistic, but realistic. Don't waste your time and money. You may want to learn something, Japanese in this instance, that can be learned outside of the University context, a context where the focus is not only self-discovery, but also gaining skills in profession(s) that can lead you in a successful career path that can contribute both you and society as a whole.
Like Japanese? Learn it alongside other skillsets so you can apply your passion for this language and culture in a field that has marketability.
For instance....I'm an English/Sociology major with a focus on Asian American studies and Asian American religions. I'm extremely passionate in AA Studies and AA Theology, and I plan to take this passion to law school for International law, focusing on the Asian continents. You CAN have your cake and eat it to, you just need to look at the bigger picture.