“Why I Chose Humanities (And Why It’s Not a ‘Weak’ Stream)”
I am a 16 yr old girl a fairly above average student, somewhat fine in studying and other aspects. When I first expressed my choice to take humanities I got mixed reactions,
(Some backstory first-Till my ninth grade i was a student entirely focused on STEM subjects, eventually as I started my tenth grade my interests shifted to the art oriented fields.)
First was Of course my Parent’s reaction-
Considering the backstory even they were shocked as it was a massive shift from my earlier choices and career opportunities, It did take some explanations and proper detailed analysis considering the AI revolution.
My teachers were however supportive and my peers were shocked ,continuously questioning me why and what was the need to choose, In specifically Indian society a child taking humanities is immediately labelled as a person weak in academics and entirely inferior to students in STEM stream.
From my own personal experiences I can confidently say that humanities students are already labelled as a failure, as its believed that in the stream one can’t get high paying jobs and has lower chances to succeed.
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Another common myth is that this subject is all about mugging up,while subjects like sociology and psychology require deep analyzation, interpretation and evaluation.
Coming on to this so called myth about lesser career opportunities or lesser chances to succeed, Let’s look at the stream which is the most in danger considering the AI era, surprisingly its our two most favorite stream ( any guesses ?) Science and Commerce.
Looking deeply into both in science stream jobs such as those of coders, developers, basic computer engineers and basic software testers are at a risk as AI models are able to these jobs much easily and efficiently.
Coming onto commerce jobs like Accountants, Payroll processing, Data entry operators etc, are the ones in danger. This doesn’t entirely mean that all jobs will disappear as the ones which are repetitive, predictable and rule based jobs will be the one’s probably disappearing.
From the above discussion I didn’t meant that humanities is the most safest stream out there or each and every job is at a danger but, to highlight the misconceptions related to this specific stream.
Now the million dollar question “Why did I take Humanities?”
Since I was introduced to the divisions in the seemingly whole subject of social studies my keen interest was in History and Civics aka Democratic Politics, As I grew and started enhancing my skills I developed interest in various other fields like Culture ,Geo-politics, Legal system, Art and Diplomacy. My reason for not taking the STEM subjects was not running away from complexities but a loss of interest.
