I think we need to change how we treat each other. I don’t always feel respected by students outside of my college who somehow think they’re better than CAS students. I’ve never been the kind of person who takes on a victim mentality—I chose to be a Communication major because it matches my personal and academic strengths.
The College of Arts and Sciences could use a little more love though. Primary examples include the current state of our outdated facilities, the lackluster A&S career fair and the negative perceptions of our college.
It often feels like students outside of our college think we don’t work hard, we won’t get jobs when we graduate and if we do, they won’t pay well.
Aren’t we supposed to do what we love and love what we do? Salary level doesn’t equal happiness or even success. Plus there are great jobs and great salaries in every career field.
If we could just get rid of the judgmental thoughts and have mutual respect for all colleges on campus, we would create a better learning environment and campus community. The College of Arts and Sciences is not the underdog because guess what? This isn’t a contest.
Liberal arts degrees allow us more flexibility to set our own career path, while business, engineering and health science degrees are more closely linked to specific jobs. Is this uncertainty a bad thing? Absolutely not. To me, it’s the most wonderful thing about higher education.
There are students who want to learn more than job skills. They care about something enough, like politics or anthropology, to dedicate four years to it, even though they don’t know where it will take them after graduation. It’s typically not about the money for these students either. It’s about a deep-seated interest and determination to give back.
We need to respect the academic diversity on our campus. Students value different things and therefore study different things. Let’s celebrate this instead of comparing our entry-level salaries, because all students at the University of Tulsa, despite their major and future plans, deserve respect.
