Hobobarista's ongoing pre-graduation coverage.

Today's segment: College Majors Explained.

Most people believe that college majors lead to careers, in real life after college. This is not true. College majors are measures of self-identification that may lead to one of various career paths, but mostly have to do with interest, naive hopes, and who you hope to exchange various fluids with before graduation.

For example, most people think that art history majors pursue the major in hopes of becoming museum curators, art critics, and art history teachers. This is not true. Art history majors pursue a variety of diverse careers, such as waitressing, bartending, and food service. They become art history majors because they dearly hope to sleep with studio art students (male) and marginally heterosexual art history professors (female).

• American Studies: This is as close as you can come to majoring in "stuff". American studies, a fairly new field mysteriously oversupplied with kindling quality PhDs, is the study of America, without specifically touching on history, politics, or high art. Vh1's various nostalgia series sum up legitimate topics of analysis for American studies. However, advanced American studies majors should be able to discuss topics as distant as the mid-nineteen sixties. So why major in American studies? Your final paper may be on a beer commercial, thinky topics are discouraged, and no actual knowledge is required to be aquired. American studies majors try to have sex with other American studies majors. And students from your finer community colleges and beauty schools, who find any major with "studies" in the title to be fairly impressive.
• Sociology: What do you do when you're too judgemental for psychology, yet not judgemental enough for political science? When you're too smart for criminal justice, but not smart enough for economics? Sociology! Sociology- the study of what people do as groups, but not in groups, and not what they think or any effects they have in specific contexts! Sociology, where you can take classes on substance abuse and alcoholism without actually aquiring any scientific knowledge about the brain or behavior! Sociology, where all you have to know is how many, never why or how! Sociology majors tend to try to have sex with psychology majors or business majors.
• Literature: Literature makes a single, desperately strong statement; I like to read things. Literature majors really, really like school. They like to read. They like to write. They like to get comments on their papers. They like to talk passionately about people who don't exist and things that never happened. They are often dreamy and easily disappointed. Literature majors like to have sex with people who make far too many preparations for the act. If you've ever selected curtains specifically for their billowing potential, you can have sex with a literature major. Be prepared for long discussions afterward about the ramifications of the moments you've just shared. And be prepared to listen to poetry they've written. All literature majors write poetry.
• Acting: Acting isn't so much a major as a cry for help. A cry that says "For the love of god, please, somebody, pay attention to me!" with a secondary echo of "oh, shit, I don't have anything of my own to say". People who study acting in college are people who, in 12-16 years of schooling, have found nothing more interesting than improving their skills at pretending something that isn't happening, is. Acting is something that can be learned outside of, or as supplement to, a college education. When a person majors in acting, they say; I am not interested in history, literature, or even American studies. I'm going to sit in a dingy room with acoustic tile on the walls and say "Mimosa" over and over again until I beleive that I'm a rock, or an onion, or a tubercular southerner. Acting majors only have sex with other actors, directing students, graduate students, or their own professors. They love to transgress, but only in aesthetically pleasing ways.
  
• Film. Film majors seem as if they'd be a lot like literature majors, but they aren't. While "I like to watch stuff" seems like "I like to read stuff", the characteristics are totally different. Film students can be divided into two categories: Film students who like the godfather, and film students who do not like the godfather. Film students who like the godfather are willing to embrace the aesthetic qualities of popular films. Film students who do not like the godfather will purport to like movies, when in fact they hate them. Film students who do not like the godfather become film students specifically in order to force people to pay attention to their sour dissappointment in popular culture. They only like movies you've never heard of. They masturbate to non-narrative porn. Sometimes, these film students are merely too unnattractive to be acting students. Film students of both types will have sex with any type of person, yet monogamy is difficult. Film students watch so many depictions of character and circumstance that a sense of lingering incompleteness dogs their relationships. No relationship can compare to the sun-drenched montages in their heads.
  
• Business: Business majors have one of two motivations. 1. Please, dear god, I want to earn more than 12 dollars an hour at some point in my life. 2. Please, dear god, please let my parents keep paying for my apartment and my visa card. Business majors will attempt to have sex with anyone who seems willing, and some who don't. Majoring in business is a bold attempt to come out of college more employable than you went in; in that way, the business major is to be admired. At least they had a plan. However, ask any arriving or departing business major what, exactly, they've learned. And wait. Because the blank stare is priceless.
  
• Psychology: Psychology is not a science. It isn't literature. It's a humanity. What's a humanity? Something that doesn't require math past the 130 level. And that's alright. Psychology is a subject studied by people that aren't sure they can pay attention to anything that isn't directly relevant to their own burgeoning neuroses and pathological self involvement for more than 52 minutes. I am a psychology major. I have sex with a computery man. The way to get into a psychology major's pants is to pretend to be really interested in her self-analyses of her own myriad problems.
  
• Classics: Classics majors combine the cosmopolitan yearnings of the foreign language majors with the fictional focus of literature majors, with the lack of social skills and day-to-day utility of history majors. In short: Classics majors want to have sex with people from strange lands, but are so afraid that havin sex with people from strange lands may be difficult, disappointing, or smelly, that they'd rather giggle over the dirty bits from Catullus than actually interact with anyone else's genitals.
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