Huma majors deserve respect, not sneers

At 2 a.m. on a Tuesday, the night before my physics final and the conclusion of my final D3 class, I was in a study room with three people I did not know very well when it happened — again. One of the boys with whom I was studying innocently muttered, presumably in order to elicit laughter, “It’s times like this I wish I were majoring in something like Women and Gender Studies.”

The problem is, I am a Women and Gender Studies major. And I am tired of all these negative comments.

There is nothing new about giving crap to Humanities majors. This comment was not the first time Rice students have mocked these “bullshit” majors, and it certainly will not be the last.

If the average Humanities major is anything like me, she is more than tired of the concerned stares of relatives and S/E friends. Oh, if we all had a nickel for every time we heard the question, “What are you planning on doing with that?”

And then there’s my personal favorite: “Oh, come on, you know engineers and pre-meds have it much harder.”

These comments are usually said with a sneer, a knowing look that tells me exactly how much my time at Rice is worth to them — an amount that comes out to slightly less than zero.

I am not debating the difficultly of the S/E curriculum. I am sure it is death made tangible in the form of equations and senior design projects. My orgo final definitely made the top 10 list of “Things In My Life That Have Sucked.” But by God, give us some credit. We struggle, too.

We, too, have stayed up all night doing homework. We, too, have those all-too-often weeks where we get no sleep for days on end. After all, when’s the last time you wrote a 15-page paper in one night?

But I hope college is not supposed to be a competition of who does the most work. Everyone at Rice struggles with their classes at some point. Regardless of major, there are times when each of us just wants to throw our hands up and tear our textbooks to shreds. But instead of sympathizing with one another, it seems we have turned on one another and decided to put each other down to make ourselves feel better. Women and Gender Studies is just a bunch of classes about angry feminists. Philosophy is something you can make up. Reli majors? Psh, it is just a bunch of reading, which is not hard. We get made fun of for studying the intangible. Because our paychecks might be smaller and our occupations not as sure, campus culture has deemed us lower than S/Es. And that lower classification seems to have started right here.

Enough! Why can’t we all just get over ourselves and appreciate the unique contributions we are going to make to the world? I am not saying my major — or any other Humanities major for that matter, though I will not presume to speak directly for them — is harder or as difficult, but that does not make it any less valuable. We are still doing something important. We are still using our brains just like everyone else.

Take a minute and think about this next time your English major roomie is complaining about his or her paper. Instead of writing him or her off because you have protein lab tomorrow, just listen for a minute. You may not understand his or her choice of major, and you may not want it for yourself, but that does not make it less legitimate. We are all taking hard classes. We are all going to make contributions. That is why we are all at Rice.

So yeah, I am a Humanities major. It is my only major. But I am still a legitimate student. I know some students may find it hard for these two thoughts to coexist in their minds, but get over it.

Kate Hildebrandt is a Baker College junior.

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