Life QotW: What's Your Major?

What was your major in college? Does your major apply to what you're doing in life now?

In my undergrad career, I double-majored in philosophy and linguistics with a minor in French.  Philosophy and linguistics apply to either everything I do or nothing at all, depending on how you look at it.  French applies to nothing at all, except that it allows me to say the names of Albert Camus books in French and basically pronounce them correctly.  "The Plague?  Oh, sure, you mean La Peste."  Nah, I'm not really that much of a pretentious ass, usually.

My graduate school days--aka the Martini Salad Days--were spent as a linguistics major, something I'm not sure Albert Borgmann forgives me for. 

I guess I don't use the linguistics at all anymore, and I sure as hell don't use the French, but studying philosophy is really two things.  The first and most obvious is that it is a study of philosophers and their works.  You read them, you analyze them, you grow weary of their jargon.  The second and more important is that it's a study of a way of thinking and seeing the world.  You can't really do that without reading some of the great works of philosophy, though you can get by without the Hegel, but doing just the first without the second is completely pointless.  In that sense, philosophy informs everything I do, all day everyday, because now I see the world and think about the world almost exclusively through that lens.  I have often said that philosophy was my first love, and whatever you major in later, you never really get over your first love, right?

My actual jobs are:  Parent, full-time yet seriously underpaid and probably undervalued; adjunct instructor of medical transcription, usually one course per semester; and online tutor for English grammar and composition.  Do I need a degree in philosophy or linguistics to do any of those?  No.  I do need a degree of some kind to teach and tutor, but philosophy doesn't directly apply.

Still, I can't ever not be a philosophy student again.  That will always be what I am.