Hello, I am currently a high school senior and I need help deciding on prospective majors for college.
I am really interested in learning about people, different cultures of the world, and just relationships between people and their respective societies. I also love working with young children which my volunteer experiences show. In addition, I enjoy teaching Korean and spreading Korean culture to children and adults who may have not grown up surrounded by their ethnic backgrounds/roots (if that makes sense…) I am definitely more of a “people-person” rather than an office person. I need to be interacting with people instead of in an office on a computer.
The majors that I have been thinking about are anthropology and international relations however, I do not know much about them. I have heard that people generally major (bachelor’s) in something more specific (like economics, business, area studies) and then pursue a international relations master’s degree. My parents have suggested to just major in education and become a teacher but I’m not so sure.
I would appreciate some advice!! If anyone has majored in anthro or int. relations, I would like some insight on the different courses and potential careers. Thank you
Why decide right now? You are likely only 17 or 18. Many colleges have no issue with applying undecided. Your first year of college, and even your sophomore year, is a great time to take a range of classes to see what sparks your interest the most. You can even consider a minor or two, or a double major. It’s hard to decide at your age because, often, the majors you can consider in college are in areas most high school students are not exposed to through the high school curriculum.
I think it’s never early to start thinking about it.
Full disclosure, I’m an anthropology major, so I’m biased.
The main difference is that international relations is a very narrow field compared to anthropology. From what I know about int. relations, its more politcal/business oriented.
Anthropology is the study of humans everywhere overtime, which pretty much encompasses everything. So it breaks down into many different subfields, but the big four are: Linguistics (the study of language), Biological Anthropology, Archaeology, and Cultural Anthropology. Cultural anthropology and Linguistics are the ones most closely aligned with your interests.
Anthropologist work in a variety of settings, as medical professionals, zoologists, human resource employees, teacher. You name a field, there’s an anthropologist working in it.
It makes a great starting point for any interest, and its a major that’s available at almost every school.
You can PM me if you have any questions.
They’re not mutually exclusive. Most of my work is done on a computer, but I also spend a large chunk of my day interacting with people and my office is an open floor plan (no cubicles, I can see all my colleagues).
I agree with @doschicos. There’s no need to choose now. You can take some classes in both when you get to college, and see which one you like better and want to pursue.
Er…not exactly. International relations is an interdisciplinary field that draws from lots of other social sciences and humanities - from economics and political science, yes, but also from sociology and anthropology and history and possibly philosophy depending on the college. The international relations major at most colleges will probably involve coursework from most if not all of these departments. Culture is a HUGE part of international relations, and anthropology is thus a pretty big component of the field. International is pretty much the opposite of narrow: it’s very broad, there are many avenues to investigate and uncover, and it doesn’t necessarily have anything to do with business (and at most colleges I would imagine the IR major has few to no business classes in it).
@LiberalCrafts I think you may be referring to linguistic anthropology, which is the study of how language influences social life and culture (pure linguistics is quite different and not a branch of anthropology). That could potentially be interesting to OP - but you don’t specialize at the undergrad level. An undergrad would take coursework in all of the areas of anthropology. There are a few colleges that might have concentrations in archaeology or biological anthropology.
That depends a lot on the school. At some schools, that can certainly be the case. But at mine for example, IR majors choose between four tracks: World trade and development; peace and security; global environment, health, and natural resources; and people and nationalities. The foundation classes your first two years are the same, with mostly language (of your choice), political science, history, and anthropology classes. Your last two years, you take a different emphasis of classes depending on your track. So if you’re in the first track your courses may be more economics oriented, but that doesn’t apply to the rest of the tracks.
From experience, my roommate for the past three years is an IR major on the people and nationalities track. Her upper level classes consist mostly of anthropology, ethnic studies, sociology, and some political science. As far as her anthropology classes go, the main difference between her and an anthropology major focusing on social anthropology is that she’s only taking classes on specific cultures related to her regional emphasis. An anthropology major might be able to emphasize certain cultures, but would also have to take anthropology classes outside of that emphasis for their major requirements.
So with respect to anthropology specifically, depending on the school you may be right about anthro being less narrow. Overall though, IR majors tend to take such a broad range of classes that you can’t really call their entire program narrow.
And julliet covered this, but don’t confuse linguistics with linguistic anthropology. They’re very different.
