It is a huge misconception that you need to do engineering, pre-med, finance, or some other "practical" field of study in college if you want to be successful when you graduate. And no, I'm not going to mention exceptional, freak-genius dropouts like Bill Gates, Steve Jobs, and Mark Zuckerburg. Instead, I'm going to show you the practical skills you learn from humanities majors (and that statement won't sound like an oxymoron when you're done reading).
1. Communication Skills
The ability to write well and speak confidently is essential in almost every professional field. These skills are taught in every humanities major and will be used in emails, meetings, applications, interviews and many other integral professional tasks (including potentially job-specific skills like marketing).
2. Leadership Skills
Humanities majors require you to actually talk in class. In order to do well, you have to be comfortable analyzing material on the spot and then communicating your thoughts in a clear, coherent way. These are the exact skills that are required of leaders in almost any professional field. If you want to lead a team, you have to be comfortable talking in front of a group and thinking on the spot.
3. The Ability to Analyze and Predict Human Behavior
Whether you're examining historical events or reading Shakespearean tragedy, the humanities teach you how people think and behave. You learn what makes people tick. This skill is essential in the professional world. It can help you determine what's marketable and how to sell a product. It can help you predict consumer trends. It can help you predict how your boss or employee will behave. The examples are endless.
4. Self-Awareness and Self-Understanding
Humanities involve a substantial amount of introspection. If you want to understand the motivation of a novelist, philosopher, or historical figure, you have to put yourself in their shoes. You'll examine issues not just in an abstract sense, but by thinking about how they relate to you. This introspective ability is essential to determining what you really want in life.
5. The Ability to Learn from Countless Disciplines
Non-technical majors force you to read a lot and critically analyze. They teach slow, deliberate thinking. This means you'll be able to read and analyze the work of people from various disciplines and you'll likely be able to learn new skills faster on the job. This is especially important because in a lot of professions, you do the bulk of your learning on the job, not in school.
One Last Thing: Your GPA
Whether you like it or not, GPA is important, and as far as employers are concerned, the higher the better. I'm not saying that all humanities majors are easy or that you're guaranteed a 4.0, but I am confident that you will never get completely screwed. Yes, sometimes a lot of reading is involved, and yes, it's almost impossible to write a "perfect" paper, but unlike my roommate who's studying computer science, you will never be up at 4 in the morning screaming obscenities at hundreds of lines of incomprehensible code.
Still Don't Believe Me? Here's Some Proof:
A Stanford study found that of 652 Silicon Valley tech company founders, 53 percent did not do a STEM (science/technology/engineering/math) major.
Another study concludes that 95% of employers value "a candidate's demonstrated capacity to think critically, communicate clearly, and solve complex problems" more than their undergraduate major. These are the skills you learn from the humanities.
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