I know it's smart to major in math/engineering/cs but I

You don't need college to study these things

I believe that college is expensive and therefore should be used as a means to an end

>>18124148

People who study soft sciences get jobs too and make it through life alright, despite everything. While STEM might make it easier, it's still not for everyone, no matter how smart a choise it would be. Doing what you enjoy over doing something you hate will benefit you in the long run.

>>18124148
If you're really interested about those kinds of things, just minor in one of them.

Arts and philosophy are hobbies. Nothing stopping you from reading on the weekends.

Though a birdge between practicality and humanitarian wouls be legal.

Though imo stem is the way to go cause its brute creating power. You can actually create something physical. You can say "sup fag, give me that steel and i can do some autocad shit and make a gun. Kant aint bullet proof.

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As you get older, you get tired of struggling, especially struggling to make ends meet. Ask anyone over 30 who doesn't have a damn car or health insurance.
I have a master's in a STEM field, which I don't need to use. I chose another path. I took a job that I loved that paid shitty and was dangerous and physically punishing (commercial fisherman), and parleyed that into a career as a merchant mariner after the injuries added up.

Your interests and desires change as you age. The things that you enjoy now will not be the same as those 10 years from now, just as the things you treasured 10 years ago will not be fulfilling today. You grow.

My backup career is my backup career. I can be a scientist, get certified as a med tech, be a scientific writer, or, God help me, a teacher. I'm the captain of an oil tanker. That's my career, but it's dependent on my continued good health, which may not last forever.

OP, you're young and should be energetic. You can pursue your passions in a lifelong journey and be happy doing so. You can't be happy, however, if you need and can't afford medical care, or want to be sure that you can both put gas in your car AND pay the electric bill. The one thing you don't have enough of will be hours in the day.
No one regrets pursuing a STEM degree. The same is not true about Fine Arts and the Humanities. Ask the person who fetches your coffee and has to take the bus home from doing so.

>>18124148
Do your research about what career you want to go into before you make the change (if you do). When choosing a major, always have the end career in mind. You're going to be spending the majority of your life at work. While money does provide happiness, it is only up to a certain point (you can't be happy if you're starving, but buying a new Porsche isn't going to make you feel any more satisfied). After that, your job will start to wear down on you if you don't like it.

>>18124329
Personally I regret going with STEM because my job is boring as fuck and I would much rather be working for a university or nonprofit. I'm not OP though so YMMV.

>>18124148
Study what you want. If you are a bright and ambitious graduate you can find a job. (In fact there is some evidence that liberal arts majors, by not being too tightly trained in a single discipline, are more flexible and thus have a wider choice of potential jobs.)

Meanwhile, college is not just for job-preparation. You're going to work, say, 40 hours a week for 40 years or so. That leaves you 128 hours a week to fill up, and even after sleep and eating, there's a lot of time to fill. Someone with broad intellectual/artistic resources may well fill that time ( and the 30 years or so you'll live after retirement) more richly.

>>18124148
My dad told me this story. In the 1980s the word among high school kinds and their parents was that you had to major in business to get a job. And by the mid 1990s the world was knee deep in unemployed business majors because there were just so many of them.

For the past 10 years or so the gospel has been that you have to study STEM to get a job. Are we perhaps approaching the moment when the market is glutted with new STEM grads?

OP here.

It's only been a few hours and already I'm looking at economics and mathematics and computer science again. Just generally curious, I think, and worried (or insecure?) about not having the opportunity to be creative in the sense I might be able to develop in, say, Eng Lit.

The reality is that I don't go out of my way to study those things. Just an image thing probably. Or an ideal. Will see what I study most of after the summer exams in my free time and pursue that.

My real, main concern, desu, is girls and social life (but mostly girls). Don't want to be surrounded by socially inept, male autistics throughout my whole degree, who don't understand what it means to have a good time. It's not like I have to spend all my time with my classmates but definitely I'll end up spending a lot of time with them in those subjects in group projects so figure I have to like the 'culture' of whatever I'm going to study-- And who doesn't like the lazy arts student lifestyle?!

Whatever field I go into, I'll probably end up hunting down that which surrounds social interaction and dealmaking or sales or politics or whatever else, where the environment or medium I'm working or competing in and on is people and not systems. Just not as exciting to me.

Maybe maths & cs or similar is a good choice, considering that if I really do want to enrich my life with all that other stuff, I can and will, and it's worth learning the hard skills where I'm forced to. Either way, I can take or leave the technical focus when graduating, I guess.

>18124824
>desu

Lol. Tbh*

>>18124550

Tech stuff isn't going away. the future is all algorithms and robots, and poetry studies isnt going to do you much good in that environment

OP, I am somewhat similar to you. I'm a Physics major and always thought I wanted to do Physics - relevant contests, olympiads, science projects, etc. I was also interested in literature and philosophy and would rather see myself as an artistic/eccentric type than an autistic without a social life. Nonetheless, I chose Physics, and I regret it now somewhat.

It can definitely be interesting and beautiful, but there's a lot of repetitive hard work that wears you down eventually -- AND you have to think if you'd want to spend the rest of your life in academia (if you choose theoretical physics, for example). Whatever you choose, don't think about the money. I, for one, think there's not enough lit and philosophy majors who truly understand what they're doing and want to study the human experience in-depth and write interesting essays. There's a huge amount of over-educated IT people, though, who can't seem to code properly and hate their job, but they chose that major since it'd bring them money and it seemed practical. I don't think that's a life to have.

Personally, I understood that I enjoy tinkering, experimenting and applying my knowledge directly, as well as having a lot of options. I think being a creative engineer has a lot of merit these days- whilst there's a lot of over-educated "idiots", there's nearly not enough creative engineers who can think outside the box AS WELL AS being truly useful for the society (and not just pandering to consumerism). So if you have a good knack for Maths, Physics AND have a philosophical side etc but decide towards "soft sciences" because you don't want to be with the STEM autists and think there's no room for philosophizing and studying the human experience -- then I'd really recommend an engineering degree. You can technically create any project you want. You can help with any research in the "soft sciences" with your ideas, programs, inventions -- get involved with absolutely anything you want. The world is your oyster.

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Face it, it's never about what YOU want (if you make it so, you are selfish), it is what everyone wants of you. You do not matter, only what you can do.

...As for girls and social life, you're right -- it sucks in STEM. But don't think about social life in uni. Most of my friends are artists, filmmakers, musicians, some are engineers too, but I met them all at different parties and bars. Focus on having a social life outside uni, and you'll feel good about combining both STEM interests and other philosophical interests as well as a need to socialize with different people. There's always an option to take some lit classes to brush up your writing skills and you can always write for magazines on the side, publish essays etc.
If you're so concerned about meeting a girl -- I met the love of my life through mutual friends at a party, and we didn't go to the same uni, he's a programmer but not exactly a science fanboy (and we have lots of other similar interests, my other half doesn't have to be psyched about my major).

>>18124896

That's really cool: You studied physics for the same reason I am drawn to it over the other sciences. There's a beauty and grandiosity to physics and the cosmos, and an elegance to a lot of the maths behind it. But the details or process behind it often muddy it -- I think we agree. Goethe once said that the way we conduct science is like a magician lifting the cloth from over the trick and, in turn, stripping away the magic. The process seems not as appealing as the result! It'd be ideal if the mechanics and learning of physics were always as interesting but the nature of science is that we strip away from whatever makes it beautiful, because we want to analyse in terms of hard, cold logic and proof.

Re: Engineering, that's part of the reason I'm looking at Maths/CS combo -- Leads to AI (machine learning) and cognitive science (inc. philosophy of mind) and AI risk (including philosophy of AI) and some stuff in computational neuroscience which looks really interesting too. Maybe I can find a niche there and create something useful while also being interesting in the way I want it to be.

Really appreciate your post. Gave me another dimension to think about.