Most of you probably don’t know this, but my undergraduate major was geography. That’s right, geography. Is it because I love maps? Well, actually, yes, I do, and my friends and family can tell you that my “go-to” present is always the most recent edition of the Atlas of the World by Oxford University Press. Every family should have one! But, I digress.
No, I didn’t choose geography just because of my fascination with maps. I chose it by default. By the time I hit the second semester of my sophomore year and had to decide on a major, I was in a crisis. I loved learning and I enjoyed every course I selected. My advisor looked at my transcript and was baffled. German, Political Science, American Folk Literature, several social Geography courses, Anthropology, 3-D Design, Beginning Drawing, American History Post WW1[i], and, of course, the requisite Gen Ed requirements in English, Math, and Science. I had one week to finalize my major. I went back to my dorm room and cried.
I didn’t want to decide. I loved the idea of keeping the door wide open to all the possibilities. In the end, I simply couldn’t decide, so my advisor did some calculations and said if I just took two more Geography courses, I would have a major and still have plenty of room left in my schedule to take the two Ceramic Sculpture courses I was eyeing for my junior year.
Later that month, I called home to tell my parents I was going to major in Geography. My Dad (whose parting comment on his weekly letter to me was “Put your nose to the grindstone, but don’t let it ruin your profile.”) wondered out loud, “What in the world are you going to do with a Geography major?!” My honest answer was, “I don’t know, but I like geography as a subject.”
Was this a “good enough” answer to my Dad’s “what in the world” question? Yes, I believe it was at the time and I still think so. Instead of outlining my rationale, let me let Omaha businessman, Sam Bittner, reveal an important truth[ii]:
I have owned a scrap-metal business for 35 years. A year ago, I hired a new manager with unusual qualifications. He has an educational background of history and English; he holds a master’s degree in foreign languages, and speaks French and German fluently.
He knew nothing about the scrap metal business. I gave him one week of instruction, told him to make mistakes and then use intelligence, imagination, and logic. He has turned this into one of the most efficiently run metal industries in the Middle West.
My company took a contract to extract beryllium from a mine in Arizona. I called in several consulting engineers and asked, “Can you furnish a chemical or electrolytic process that can be used at the mine site to refine directly from the ore?” Back came a report saying that I was asking for the impossible—a search…indicated that no such process existed.”
I paid the engineers for their report. Then I hired a student from Stanford University who was home for the summer. He was majoring in Latin American history with a minor in philosophy. I gave him an airplane ticket and a credit card and told him, “Go to Denver and research the Bureau of Mines archives and locate a chemical process for the recovery of beryllium.” He left on Monday. I forgot to tell him that I was sending him for the impossible.
He came back on Friday. He handed me a pack of notes and booklets and said, “Here is the process. It was developed 33 years ago at a government research station at Rolla, Missouri. And here are other processes for the recovery of mica, strontium, columbium, and yttrium, which also exist as residual ores that contain beryllium.” After a week of research, he was making sounds like a metallurgical expert.
He is now back in school, but I am keeping track of him. When other companies are interviewing the engineers and business administration mechanics, I’ll be there looking for the history-and-philosophy major….
In my business I want people who have tangible qualities. Anyone can meet them. They are marching across the pages of books—poetry, history and novels.
If you have a story to tell about choosing your college major, I would love to hear it!
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[i] Note: When I was in high school, none of my history teachers ever got past WWI. I was curious. 🙂
[ii] Sam Bittner wrote these remarks as part of an opinion piece that appeared in The Chronicle of Higher Education.
