Difficultly in Choosing Major

Student Lounge College Life
1

<p>I am planning on majoring in IR as a freshman next year. However, I am not sure on which region to focus on: Middle East or Latin America. In this case, if I focused on ME, I would probably want to learn Arabic and French. For LA, I would stick with my Spanish (which I am currently taking AP Spanish and getting an A) and learn Portuguese. However, there are problems with both options. For ME, it would be hard to learn Arabic since all the schools I got accepted to do not offer Arabic. How do I learn such a hard language? Also, there is a wide possibility of getting kidnapped if I worked in ME affairs. There are some benefits with ME though. I am by far more interested in ME affairs, and learning Arabic could help me get a job with the State dept (although I don't want to base my major on that one, hypothetical career that would be hard to get). </p>

<p>However, as for LA, Latin America also tends to be have one of the most dangerous regions in the world. They have the highest homicide rate, over 60,000 people died in Mexico last several years or so from the drug war, etc. I have a considerable interest in LA affairs, but not as much as ME. However, some of my colleges have strong LA departments, course offerings, and possible internships. While many people already speak Spanish in the US and would not be as in demand by the State dept (and thus harder to work for such an agency), it does have better backdoor opportunities in working in business, domestic and international. While ME isn't the best region for business (except for oil), LA has a lot more natural resources with Brazil and Mexico in mind. Knowing Portuguese in this regard may be very helpful.</p>

<p>Overall, what does the CC community think I should do in terms of what region to focus on? I've been thinking about this long and hard, and it's a hard decision to make. As for other regions such as Asia, I don't have a strong interest at all in places like China, so learning Chinese or Japanese for business would be a lot harder if I don't have an interest.</p>

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<p>There isn’t necessarily a high possibility that you will get kidnapped if you work in Middle Eastern affairs. Not all jobs in that field are in security or high-level international politics, and those jobs are few and very competitive. I would actually be willing to bet that most jobs in that field are actually in the U.S. If you are more interested in Middle Eastern affairs, then focus on that.</p>

<p>Also, you can’t predict what’s going to happen in 5-10 years. I’m sure that 10 years ago, nobody could predict that the Middle East and China would take as much precedence in American foreign politics as they do now; in 10 years, it may be Russian and Portuguese that are in really high demand.</p>

<p>Select the one that you are more interested in learning about. There’s also nothing saying you can’t learn Arabic and Spanish - I had a friend in college who studied abroad in both places and knew both languages fluently.</p>