“Major Shaming” is a Major Issue

I don’t know about you, but I have been seeing various posts on social media that I simply do not agree with. This new trend is what I would like to call “major shaming.” This recent phenomenon is when someone assumes that someone else’s major is unimportant because they think that their major is harder or requires more work. I saw a post on Twitter during midterm season about a girl studying for her bio exam and was annoyed that her friend was nervous for her COM midterm. Basically, this girl implied that her friend, the Communications Studies major, had no right to complain about how hard her exam was going to be. At the time, this tweet really bothered me, but I figured that the girl tweeting was just frustrated and might be ignorant to the fact that there’s more to COM than just learning definitions. I blew it off.

Fast forward to Thanksgiving break and I’m sitting at my friendsgiving table. The topic of school came up and one friend mentioned that his classes this semester were harder than they had been before. A girl from the other side of the table tells him not to complain about marketing classes because she’s a Kinesiology major at her school. I shot the girl a nasty look and figured she was just the type of person that has to one-up everyone around her.

Then low and behold, It happened again. Last night when I was scrolling through Twitter, I noticed a tweet about someone doing a biochemistry report while a girl cuts out coloring pages for her education class. The tweet said

“college is crazy because you can be in the library working on your 20+ page biochemistry lab report while some girl sitting next to you cuts out gingerbread men for her education class and complains about not having enough time to do it” (see the original tweet here)

This tweet led to MANY responses backing up the education major, but the concept that someone thinks that their major is better than others rubbed me the wrong way. Yes, engineers, doctors, pharmacists, etc., are on a difficult road to achieving their career goals. But that isn’t to say that public relations, education, humanities, and art majors have an easier path.

My boyfriend is an engineering major and when I try to explain to him the concepts that I am learning in my Com Theory class, it’s like I’m speaking another language. It’s exactly the same when he tries to tell me about what he’s learning in his classes.

It’s not that one major is better than the other, it’s just that they’re different and made for people with different goals, skills, and mindsets.

Yes, doctors are important and I would hope that my doctor would be in school for a long time, but they’re not better than lawyers or teachers or news broadcasters.

Doctors rely on PR majors to get patients to come to their practice.

A teacher may need an accountant to help her with her taxes.

An engineer might need lawyer to help with their divorce.

Once we realize that all majors are important and stop putting down others for what they’re good at, we’ll realize that we need each other in our future careers.

All I’m asking is for you to reconsider making fun of the girl that is freaking out about her presentation for her supply chain management class or tweet about the boy frustrated by his children in poverty class. Before you post about someone that you think has an easy major, I challenge you to take one class in that topic. Maybe you’ll realize there’s no such thing as an ‘easy major’.

We need ALL majors.

• college
• college majors
• Major Shaming