I did an undergrad philosophy degree from over 10 years ago. My experience report is that I consistently rely on it. Philosophy gave me tools to evaluate other

I did an undergrad philosophy degree from over 10 years ago. My experience report is that I consistently rely on it. Philosophy gave me tools to evaluate others' claims and taught me that communication is inherently difficult. And because of that, it's not enough to be right - it's important to be persuasive. But there's a tension there. Persuasion is very close to manipulation. An unfortunate side-effect of philosophy is doubt. Lots of the beliefs that we hold without reflection are slippery, even incoherent. There's a riddle-like quality of attempting to define something like truth or identity and realizing that as one gets closer to that definition, the definition seems to slip away. It's true that professional philosophers can deal with topics which inherently abstract and irrelevant to the everyday. The same is true with all specialists. Yet the skills that philosophers bring to bear are incredibly relevant to every social interaction. The philosopher's role is to evaluate others' arguments and posit one's own. Lastly, one of the things that I enjoyed the most about philosophy is that touches many fields. While I would guess that the core of contemporary analysis are subjects such as Language, logic and cognition, it's surprising how many intellectual gaps there are in other parts of human thinking. Within those gaps, you'll find philosophers having a debate.