Attending the usual networking events while searching for a job is something I usually dread. The scene is always the same and the one question always asked of me by some "Shelley Levine in a leisure suit" is, "So, young Christopher, what did you major in while studying at that state-funded, urban concrete university of yours?"
"I was a Communications major," I always respond with a naïve twinkle in my eye.
The generic partygoer usually gasps in horror, "Well, what are you going to do with that?"
Though Communications remains a mystery to the average person, it is nothing to fear or loathe. Communications is, simply put, the art of bullshit. That's right, bullshit. Graduates in the Communications field are paid (yeah, right!) insane amounts of money to talk about, write about, and invent new ways to present bullshit.
If you are undecided on a college major, I highly recommend Communications. It's one of the few fields, other than Philosophy, in which you can actually drink your way through college and come out with a better grade point average than if you had stayed sober.
No money for beer? Sell those burdensome Communications manuals! Communications majors don't read, and those books are useless propaganda anyway. So sorry, Dr. Wayne W. Dyer, Eckhart Tolle, and any other self-help boogeyman out there: Print is dead. Long live the age of video!
What about research and reports, you may ask? More bullshit. My thesis for my Master's degree is going to be on how Scrappy-Doo ruined Scooby-Doo's show and why Freddy, Daphne, Velma and Shaggy always wore the same damn clothes day after day, thanks (in no small part) to a "Nixon era recession." See what I mean?
Basically, the library serves no purpose for us. Oh, sure, those soundproof study cubicles were great for having sex in while at college but, other than that, Communications majors have no real purpose for that dusty old book building, do they?
It might seem Communications majors are the lowest members on the totem pole of education, but if college was the food chain equivalent of "Stratego," Communications majors would be "the eights" and Philosophy majors would be "the nines." In that light, Communications majors outrank, or could jump, Philosophy majors - but are vulnerable to just about everyone else.
Article comments
— go to most recent comments1 - Our Lady of The Worthless Miracle
May The Source be with you.
2 - Willy
Worst article ever, there's plenty of opportunities for communications majors
3 - Chris McVetta
Free Willy, I couldn't agree with you more.
4 - Jam
Gave me a laugh (and speaking as a freshman majoring in communication and journalism more concerned with the weekend than the week) a sense of hope.
5 - Chris McVetta
Thank you! I truly am the Luke Perry of journalism!
6 - Joy
hahah after reading this i realize communications is the only major for me
7 - Chris McVetta
Yes, I am truly the Indiana Jones of journalism (cough).
And, as always, I am just making it up as I go along... Where's my fedora?
Chris (closes eyelids in classroom): LUV YOU.
8 - BOB SMITH
I don't get this article!!!???
9 - Ria
Hilarious! I was a communication major and slept my way through many semesters. I do think however, I learned how "work" every job I have ever had. I am doing well and most jobs are eager to test out my public speaking, presentation, writing and Question and Answer skills. But this article sorta true :p
10 - Deon
So are you saying that finding a job in the field of communications will be easy or will this be difficult?
11 - Melissa Cenona Rivera
That's the major I'm in! I wanted to be in theatre, but my horrible, horrible acne pimple proactive-lacking face mixed with the stage lights is unbearable.
12 - Vanessa Carlson
Very funny.
13 - Jason Norbert
You are a certified idiot. It takes losers like you who were never anything and never will be anything to write such drivel. Your drug addiction is showing! The best employee I ever hire was a Comm. Major and today she is number 2 in the company pulling down $425,000 base salary per year and has 25,000 shares in our company. Stock is now on the exchange at $18.05 per share. What a loser she is!
14 - Jen
I don't agree with this article at all, it's not even funny. There's plenty to do with a Communication major, especially if one wants to go into journalism, anything media related, or even theatre.
What I find funny is how the author of this article is putting his own self down for majoring in Communication. Very odd and a big turn off.
15 - Chris
You revel in being uninformed and uninvolved? That seems like it would lead to a lonely, shallow life.
16 - Silas Kain
Is there even such a thing as "communications" any longer? Journalism? What I see is a new generation of so-called journalists who have not even a modicum of understanding of what journalism really is. We're producing media whores interested in the sensational because that's what drives ad revenues. Madison Avenue and their brigade of medicine men have created this fantastic illusion that the majority of Americans have accepted without any hesitation. Barack Obama screws up and the nation gets it's collective knickers in a snit. Tiger Woods screws half the good looking white women left on the planet and it sells millions of dollars in scandal rags and keeps pundits rich. We're a pathetic, sick, self-pleasing lot. You want to know why the world outside the U.S. laughs at us? Oh, I'm sorry. You don't give a damn what the rest of the world thinks. It might take you away from Jon & Kate plus 8 million.
You revel in being uninformed and uninvolved? That seems like it would lead to a lonely, shallow life.
Gee, does that mean that the majority of Americans live a lonely shallow life? We're completely uninformed on that which counts and we don't involve ourselves in anything of substance. I guess the majority of Americans are shallow and lonely.
17 - Mark Saleski
re: #16. gee, i bet you're fun at parties.
18 - Silas Kain
I used to be the life of the party. Joke all you want, Mark, but I am really worried -- not about me but about my kids and their kids. I'm worried that 40 years from now they will be left with a world that is so messed up that life as we've known it will be but a faint memory. I don't have much time left on this planet and I shouldn't care. What happens five or ten years from now won't affect me, I'll be a ball of dust in an urn. But that doesn't negate my personal responsibility to try and leave a safer, cleaner world filled with prospects of a better life for the generations yet to be born. Our ancestors sacrificed plenty to come to these shores. The only sacrifice we know is the task of changing the batteries in our respective remote controllers.
19 - Ruvy
Silas,
I spent all morning in Jerusalem doing my job as an editor - explaining to my friend that he had no transitions in his book (you know what transitions are - the off ramps that get you from I80 to Jersey Route 4), and that he needed to dump about a third of what he had in the book as it confused the central topic he was focusing on.
After I sold this salesman on how to write a better sales piece, we got down to the important business - how America is going down the tubes. His old friend and buddy, a former major executive for the World Bank, had been explaining to him how the WASP élite was doing everything they could to make the United States of America as much like the Brazilian United States as they could - and how they were succeeding royally.
The reason this guy knew all about the WASP élite was that before he converted to be a Jew - he used to be part of that élite - with a lot of the privileges and power that came with it. There is a reason I write the kinds of things I do and why I criticize Obama as a "white élitist". He is one.
You want to be the life of the party again, Silas? Repeat after me:
"Making a fortune turning America's most abundant resource into money is an honorable profession." Now try that again:
"Making a fortune turning America's most abundant resource into money is an honorable profession." Alright, Silas, now say it like you mean it.
"Making a fortune turning America's most abundant resource into money is an honorable profession."
Will this make you feel better about America going down the tubes? Of course not! You have the same disease I have: a terminal case of conscience.
It's hopeless. There is no cure.
But the bullshit will slide off your tongue like piss comes out of a pecker. And that will make you feel better.
20 - Silas Kain
"Making a fortune turning America's most abundant resource into money is an honorable profession."
Thanks, Ruvy. Now I need a Librium.
21 - roger nowosielski
What is America's most abundant resource?
Naive minds?
22 - Ruvy
No, Roger. Any Appleton boy can tell you what America's most abundant resource is:
BULLSHIT!! That is what this article was about in the first place. Did you read it?
Oh, yeah. My room-mate in Minnesota came from Appleton WI - the home of smokin' Joe McCarthy. And he taught what America's most abundant resource was. He laid (unknowingly) the groundwork for my present profession - editing.
[Ruvy contemplates his now dead room-mate....
"Thanks Dan! I never thanked you for all you taught me!"]
23 - Guest
Brilliant. Communications majors are for morons and football players, not that those are exclusive to each other.
24 - MNTOM
That was the most ass backwards article, I can't believe I read the whole thing. You can't even structure a decent paper. I made 60,000 my first year out with a comm degree. It sounds like you are a looser without a job. You can comment on my comment but I won't be checking back.
25 - Comm
As a communications major one has to take courses in the same things that one may wish to work in someday - TV, Radio, Magazines, News (broadcast & print), Public Relations, etc...