# Why The Psychology Major Was Perfect For Me



## serenesam (Jul 26, 2011)

When I was in my final year in college, I graduated with a major in psychology and a minor in business management. As I look back, I sort of wished I never minored in business management. Virtually everything I learned in the school of business tends to differ and even contradicted from what I was learning in psychology. In the school of business, I learned that globalization is such a wonderful thing from my marketing professor. I learned that the gap between the rich and the poor is not widening from my business ethics professor. I learned that the ultimate goal in the organization is profit maximization. I learned that Warren Buffet was such an intelligent man who was rejected to Harvard University because he was too young. There was a lot of glory given to the study of Warren Buffet. Who would have known that a year later, I was watching the Keiser Report and Max Keiser was talking about the unethical practices of Warren Buffet. Perhaps the “almost” oxymoronic phrase of “business ethics” is not as cheesy as it appears to be. 

On the contrast, when I was sitting in my psychology courses, globalization did not really seem like a great thing. I learned about socioeconomic status, poverty, stratification, exploitation of one country upon another country, cheap labor, and poor little kids having to work in sweatshops. A human being did not seem like a human resource or a human asset in its denotative definition that you get from the textbook or encyclopedia. A human being was more like an expendable container or just a serial number to do repetitive boring tasks. A human being was a slave to labor because as the research suggested, a person born of low socioeconomic status will die as the same status. I learned that the gap between the rich and poor is widening and getting bigger as time passes by. I learned from my psychology professors that they went into this profession not for the money but to be educators and perhaps aid in fixing for the good of all people. I still remember the final farewell words from one of my developmental psychology professors near the end of the semester and she said, “I mean, I didn’t get rich.” It really did get my attention as I have always known long ago that life was much more than paying the bills and eating foods. We are here for a purpose and that is to better the conditions of the whole world to the benefit of everyone. She also added that “You will be shocked to find that the financial analyst and managers make a thousand times more money than you, but they really aren’t that smart.”

The simple act of watching and observing my fellow classmates was very fascinating to me. I have been both with business students and psychology students and the differences are present. I found business students to be highly competitive not just within themselves but with each other. They are very keen at perceiving strength. They value strength and not weakness. I even had an intro to management business professor that said, “The chain is only as strong as its weakest link.” Perhaps that was just a fancy way of saying “align yourselves with the strong, cut off the weak, and do not associate yourself with those who have developmental disabilities for they may drag you down.” Even the women seemed heartless and cold. They are only nice to you if they think you are smart and so they can use you to help them partner study or group study. Some of the students already hold supervisorial positions in the real world and they just go to school part time. I was personally attracted to my fellow psychology students because they tend to be quite the opposite. I found psychology students to be a lot warmer and friendlier (not the fake friendliness you get from business students). They are very sharp at understanding human behavior. All of my professors and even the teaching assistants were very, very nice people. They were very compassionate beings. When I look back to my college experience, I can honestly say that I learned a lot about not just the study of psychology but life itself. I still remember the life lessons and stories from my professors and fellow classmates and I went home in awe just about every time.

So going back to the fundamental reason why I studied business management in the first place was because I was interested in the accounting and finance aspect and not the deceptive tactics of how to use the* foot-in-the-door technique* or the *door-in-the-face technique* or even selling an item for $999.99 instead of $1,000.00. Now that I think about it, it was just a waste of time to brainwash me and turn me into a psychopathic entity. I could have spent that time doing graduate studies in experimental psychology or advance neuropsychology. The hell with it, spending time learning every area of Brodmann’s area would be worth much more value of my time even if it took me 1000 hours.


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## wandrere (Jun 11, 2010)

Well then...that seems like a very general description of the different populations at your school, but from my experiences I saw competitiveness in ALL of the different subjects/majors that I took. I'm a science major - everyone wants to become a doctor and make money, only 5% actually make it, leading to that fake-ness and competition that you described. In a history elective, it was known as an 'easy' course, everyone was competitive with each other of who would get that full 100%. In my political ecology course, everyone was competitive with each other of who could formulate the best argument and win the professors acclaim, etc etc etc with every other course (psychology included). Maybe I just go to a competitive, academic focused school (in fact, it kind of has that reputation) but in my honest opinion, I feel that this competitiveness amongst students is everywhere.

Our economic situation may have a lot to do with it, people are stressed about the future, will so and so degree land them that high paying job? Maybe if they do really well and get into that posh grad school, they'll have a better chance? Or maybe university is becoming more and more worthless now that students are entering in the hundred thousands every year, and getting this type of an education isn't all that it used to be in the past, therefore a feeling of hopelessness lumes over everyone and that obligation to be 'nice' to your fellow man just goes away? Everyone wants to be that big fish in that big oceanic pond, but when I take a step back sometimes all I see are a bunch of tiny goldfish, very tightly compacted, ever so fervently vibrating their little gills for that little gasp of oxygen we call success/money/approval blah blah.


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## serenesam (Jul 26, 2011)

wandrere said:


> everyone wants to become a doctor and make money, only 5% actually make it, leading to that fake-ness and competition that you described.


Yes, this is also true at my school, only about 5% go on to pursue a PhD, but keep in mind that there are 5,000 janitors with PhDs - There Are 5,000 Janitors in the U.S. with PhDs


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## wandrere (Jun 11, 2010)

O.O That is news indeed.


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## dottywine (Feb 7, 2011)

PHD doesn't mean anything. It sounds cool but it doesn't mean you get hired. 

But if it makes you feel better, there are people who are BOOK smart, but don't have the STREET smarts for going further in life.


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## Tiervexx (Nov 7, 2010)

dottywine said:


> PHD doesn't mean anything. It sounds cool but it doesn't mean you get hired.
> 
> But if it makes you feel better, there are people who are BOOK smart, but don't have the STREET smarts for going further in life.


This is mostly just something people who are bad at academics say to make themselves feel less stupid.

"Book smarts" and "Street smarts" are very ill defined terms. There are "book smarts" that translate to finding jobs and ones that don't. For example, I double majored in engineering specifically because I knew I wanted to be able to actually find a job.



serenesam said:


> Yes, this is also true at my school, only about 5% go on to pursue a PhD, but keep in mind that there are 5,000 janitors with PhDs - There Are 5,000 Janitors in the U.S. with PhDs


I don't find that at all surprising. Many people go into debt to pay for college just so they can get a degree that they should have known in advance would not get them a job.

It bothers me a lot to see people cite studies like this as an example that college in general is not a very good investment. That is a fallacious view. To make sense of the data it needs to be broken down by specialty.

Now don't get me wrong... my best friend has a degree in theater and I totally respect her for it. I respect her because she understood that it would likely not lead to a career. She just studied what she wanted to study. The people I get frustrated with are the people who picked a useless major and than act like the world owes them something when they find out that high dollar jobs don't want them.

...and then they become a statistic for studies that allegedly show that college does not give good returns.


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## serenesam (Jul 26, 2011)

Tiervexx said:


> This is mostly just something people who are bad at academics say to make themselves feel less stupid.
> 
> "Book smarts" and "Street smarts" are very ill defined terms. There are "book smarts" that translate to finding jobs and ones that don't. For example, I double majored in engineering specifically because I knew I wanted to be able to actually find a job.
> 
> ...


You must be one of the lucky ones then. I know a lot of people with degrees in engineering and even one person with a masters in engineering that can't get a job.


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