<p>Hey guys, I'm a freshman at USC and I'm looking at a couple of majors right now. I was wondering if anyone knew how good these particular programs are at my school or if they are useful degrees for the future.</p>
<p>Linguistics/Psychology- USC has a combined linguistics psychology major that sounds pretty interesting. I'm pretty good with languages and I think psychology sounds fascinating but I've honestly never taken a class in it before.</p>
<p>International Relations- I'm big into travel and hanging out with people from foreign cultures. I'm honestly not sure what international relations entails but I heard it's one of the better career majors in the humanities.</p>
<p>Interactive Media- It's the video game program at the film school. It's really highly ranked, and I'm honestly super interested in video games, but my only fear is that I'll get laughed at for picking it as my major. It would also be hard to get in as an internal transfer, although not impossible.</p>
<p>Critical Studies Film- I'm in the intro to film class and I love it. I'm just wondering if critical studies really helps at all for film careers or if it just helps you criticize film more effectively.</p>
<p>Business- It's a great gateway degree and I've heard the Marshall School here is very good. I like the whole idea of building up and managing a business, but I'm no math genius, so I wonder if I would be destroyed by the math courses.</p>
<p>Screenwriting- I'm not gonna lie, I would love this is a major. The only things are it is super hard to get into and I would have to stay an extra year minimum. Both of which are pretty big barriers.</p>
<p>Thank you for reading this far, and if you have any insight on any of the potential majors I listed, I would appreciate your help.</p>
<p>Also, I really want to double major, so any ideas on which to combine would be super helpful as well!</p>
<p>I think one of the areas you need to explore is what you might do with these various degrees because being in school is not like real life. </p>
<p>I know that a BA in Psych is not enough education to work in that field so you would need to go on for a Masters or Phd.</p>
<p>My input on video game design majors is that it feels like it is a marketing draw for schools. I mean, there are so many schools who offer this major now. I’d like to know where all the people are who are going to buy and play these video games. It used to be websites needed to be made by special people, but now anybody can make their own website with special canned programs. I think video games will do that too so why will anyone need a video game designer if they can make one themselves and where will all those graduates be?</p>
<p>LastThreeYears, I don’t know what your thing is about posting everywhere on cc that students pursue engineering but did you read the part of his post where he said he wasn’t strong in math?</p>
<p>People always say they’re not strong in math but that’s because they haven’t tried what real non-math is. Try memorizing the number of water molecules produced by glycolysis, with the answers being similar integers and having that on your final (this happened). Or try memorizing what protein 234n3100 interacts with protein 143mxk2d (made up names, but might as well be, since so many proteins have names that have nothing to do with their function). Ever take signal transduction or development? PURE MEMORIZATION. Humanities is hardly better. Hate recieving a C because you can’t interpret some 15th century poem the way the teacher wants you to? You’ll be thanking math and loving math by the time you’re done memorizing for the non-math classes. </p>
<p>Everyone that says they’re not strong in math is kidding themselves because they don’t know the annoyance and agony of memorizing thousands of useless details or trying to guess what the teacher wants you to say. I suffered because I thought I wasn’t good at math, took a useless soft science major, wasted my life memorizing tiny details that no one will ever care about (yes, I realize that there are also millions of engineering calculations that no one cares about, but at least they taught you how to calculate that one certain, tiny, idealized situation and can be extrapolated to real life; detail memorization doesn’t even teach you that) and am trying to salvage my college career, and don’t want anyone else to suffer the same fate. Thank goodness I took enough math and chemistry to bail me out in time but others who went into completely non-science majors will not have that opportunity!</p>
<p>Look, everyone can do math. You don’t even have to be good at it. Just able to tolerate it. Or tolerate it better than memorization. If anyone thinks they’re bad at math, try memorizing 10 pages of a dictionary per day, that’s representative of what you’re going to be like for 4 years if you take a non-hard science or engineering major.</p>
<p>Also, I don’t only suggest engineering. I also suggest Math (for finance) and Chemistry as they are the most applied sciences. I especially suggest Chemistry since outside P-chem it’s mostly adding and subtracting, not too difficult for anyone to learn and gives a good career with significant growth opportunities.</p>
<p>Hello there!
Well, reading through your options, I think it’s pretty clear you should consider something related to the FILM INDUSTRY, be it Critical Studies, Media (videogames and such) or Screenwritting. I would think you’re very much into this field, which of course you could pair up with a business degree and double major or minor. As posted previously Your explainations of why you won’t pursuit the media/ film related majors is because they’re really tough programs to get into. But I say you should at least give it a shot. Btw, your major is no funny deal, and you shouldn’t worry about other people laughing at your choice. It’s YOUR choice. I hardly think students in these tough-to-get-into programs think their workload/major is funny. I have a friend studying animation in fl and he really enjoys it, VERY demanding and well, he got an internship at pixar
As for IR, it’s kind of a little far from your other interests… and it’s way more than just liking to travel and hanging with people from other cultures (this you can do with almost every major, as there are study abroad programs for lots of majors). IR explores politics, international organizations, international law, sociology, foreign cultures, you’ll have to learn a new language, economy, etc.
BTW I agree with lastthreeyears, math shouldn’t keep you from doing what you like. You will be able to survive it, even if it’s more challenging than the average courses you take. don’t worry!</p>
<p>I think you have many cool options. Since USC is famous for their film school, all the majors you listed are extremely well-regarded in the entertainment industry. As you probably know, there are no degrees in the arts that are guaranteed to lead directly to specific careers. The fun (!) is in learning to express your own voice and then making your own path. It takes a certain entrepreneurial spirit, talent, experience, hard work, luck and connections. USC offers great training, many internship opportunities and many connections.</p>
<p>As an example, my S1 is an Interactive Entertainment major in SCA and he’s had amazing internships, employment, paid research and professional opportunities> For example, Microsoft, Google, and other companies directly recruit from this major, as well has hundreds of smaller companies. Lakemom may not realize that IM is the field that encompasses smart phone apps, iPad apps, PC apps and all new media. Social networking happens to be the big thing, of course, but there are new markets always emerging. Just like most of us will not write our own books (in order to enjoy a novel) or write and direct our own films, there will always be a place for well-crafted entertainment in our culture. In addition, there are many applications for “serious games” in health care, education, and many other fields. If you have the drive to create that future of entertainment or to use interactive media to improve, for example, literacy learning, you should go for it.</p>
<p>Since you are loving the Critical Studies course, why not go and talk with an SCA advisor about the road to transferring–just in case.</p>
