By Marissa Herm
“Isn’t it the easy major?”
Raise your hand if you’re a Comm major and you’ve heard this one more than you can count!
How many times have you been in a situation where miscommunication has happened, or you had to be careful about how you craft your message to different people? This is why we have Communication majors. How many students do you know who would jump at the opportunity to nearly double their class time because of the amount of group meetings and projects? How many would relish the thought of drafting a case analysis paper on their Saturday off? Once again, this is why Communication isn’t ‘the easy major.’
“What job can you get with that?”
I have a great answer for this one. ANYTHING AND EVERYTHING. Okay, maybe we can’t become doctors, but hey, you never know. A Communication degree has a basis of skills that can flexibly adapt to a lot of career paths. The Communication degree also offers multiple emphases to allow students to chose a more specific path: journalism, mass media, public relations, or organizational communication. The program at UWGB, especially, allows students to choose multiple emphases to broaden their skill set.
Also, your major doesn’t dictate your future – what you do with it does. Boom!
“I don’t know what to do in my life, so I’ll just pick Communication.”
This stereotype is partially true. Communication is a great major for anyone. The program teaches you great public relations, writing, critical thinking, and analytical skills. It’s a wonderful skill set for those who aren’t sure what they want in a career yet, but want those essential collaboration and group work skills for when they enter the work force.
“Do you just learn how to communicate with people?”
This is like us asking Business majors, “Do you just learn how to do business?”
Maybe we should give this critique a highly specific answer. “We learn how to effectively communicate to an audience in order to elicit specific responses by leveraging highly thought-out strategies.”
Communication majors learn how to effectively communicate. This ranges from understanding the ways of word choice; figuring out the best source to get to the bottom of a story; influencing audiences and stakeholders; leveraging power behind nonverbal communication; utilizing the importance of goals, objectives, strategies, and tactics, risk communication strategies; and much more.
Oh, and I bet we could detect your Myers-Briggs personality score in .52 seconds.
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