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Why signal your intelligence with a degree that you worked hard for but has no intrinsic value? Why signal it in a fields that sometimes don't even really depe

• joebadmo 15y ago
  Why signal your intelligence with a degree that you worked hard for but has no intrinsic value? I think your understanding of my position is colored by your assumptions about value. If you mean "no intrinsic value" as 'employability' or 'earning potential,' I would say that I value other things more than either of those. To answer the question, though, I wasn't trying to signal my intelligence when I chose my degree. I was trying to learn. I was exploring fields that I found interesting. I chose Comp Lit specifically because it offered me the broadest set of opportunities for learning. (I minored in Linguistics, and would have probably double majored if I thought I could afford to spend another six months in school.) As for skill, I think you misrepresent what the Sokal hoax was about, and what it proved. I actually did start school as a CS major, and I found it interesting and still do, but the CS curriculum was prohibitively restrictive and exclusive to other fields, and I wanted to explore more. If any of the 'hard' fields had given me more cross-disciplinary opportunities, I probably would have chosen one of them.