Editorial Observer: Focus on Humanities

 If you’re anything like me, as finals roll around, readings that you haven’t finished over the semester start to catch up with you and spots in the Brody Reading Room get harder and harder to come by, sometimes you start to ask yourself: is all the stress of a Hopkins education worth it? As a graduating Writing Seminars/Italian double major, I’m not entirely sure.

I’m thankful that I’ve had the privilege of attending one of the most elite institutions in the world, had the opportunity to study whatever I chose and met brilliant, supportive friends who I’ll hopefully remain close to long after graduation day. But I’d be lying if I didn’t say that one of the reasons I chose Hopkins is because I knew its name would look great on my resumé. An undergraduate education is compulsory for practically any entry-level job, yet the Career Center lacks the resources and relationships to help humanities majors get jobs and internships.

Take, for instance, the most recent recruiting e-mail I received, which highlighted available positions as a Web Developer, Product Engineer, and Sales & Marketing Analyst. In case you’re not a humanities major, I’ll fill you in: we’re not discussing product design or open source software in our seminars. The Humanities & Social Sciences Newsletter, too, supposes that I’m interested in becoming a Business and Marketing Developer or Marketing Associate, or enter the mysterious world of Consulting. (Sidenote: does anyone even know what consulting is?) My friends and I that are interested in careers in fields such as media, museums and public policy can’t help but feel ignored.

These aren’t exactly fields with lots of vacancies, and I wouldn’t write this if I didn’t try to reap the benefits of the Career Center more than once. Yet it’s impossible not to feel frustrated when over a third of the companies that attended the Spring 2014 Career Fair were recruiting engineers. When the Career Center did host an event with representatives from Columbia University to learn about what students can do to prepare for a career in publishing — a field which several of my Writing Seminars classmates expressed interested in attending — we didn’t receive an email about it until a mere four hours before the event, rendering it virtually impossible to change our work or class commitments in order to attend. And when a Career Center representative attended my sorority’s senior meeting to teach us how to apply for jobs, the advice that she gave us — how to build a basic LinkedIn profile, how to dress for an interview and how to write a resumé — require common sense and a Google search. I have the gusto to email alumni who have careers I’m interested in, but on campus, there is virtually nothing career counselors can offer besides a look at my resumé. 

I take my coursework and my career seriously, and I know my education has prepared me to think critically and write well — skills that I’ll need for a career in journalism. On-campus career resources could give top humanities and social sciences students the edge we need to make a difference in our chosen fields. This is the same university that has produced Pulitzer Prize winning journalists, famous actors and arguably the best mayor New York City has ever seen. We’re more than just a science and engineering powerhouse, and it’s about time we acted like it.