Informal Writing #7 Tara Nahodil

Belinda Parmar: “I wasted four years of my life…”

Gordon Hutner: “The real humanities crisis.”

Hutner: Why do you feel like you wasted four years of your life?

Parmar:I studied foreign language for four years and since then, have not used it.

Hutner: Have you tried applying for jobs?

Parmar: Yes, and every time speaking a different language was not enough to satisfy them.

Hutner: Are you applying to the right jobs?

Parmar: What do you mean?

Hutner: Are you applying to jobs that are relative to language?

Parmar: Well, no.

Hutner:What were you planning on doing when you got out of college?

Parmar: Either a novelist or a translator.

Hutner: They are the jobs that you need to be applying for.

Parmar: Well these are not the jobs that make a lot of money. “A survey recently showed that three of the best-paid jobs for women are in the technology sector.” And don’t we all want to make a lot of money?

Hutner: Yes but, you wasted four years of your life because you were wrong about what you wanted to do after college. You should have researched your “dream job” and maybe you would have realized that it doesn’t make a lot of money.

Parmar: I did research it. And at the time, I thought I was going to be able to make it. But when I stepped out of college my eyes opened up. Women have been told to study things in the humanities just because they are women and they are not supposed to make as much money as men.

Hutner: People like you are the sole reason why the funding for humanities degrees are getting cut. Colleges have been dropping graduate programs because “people aren’t making a lot of money.” Whether they are making a lot of money or not, we need people to do those degrees. We need teachers and novelists. Imagine how boring life would be with just technology.

Parmar: That’s what should be happening. Colleges need to spend more time and money on the math and science degrees because they are the degrees that save lives. Boring or not, this is what is important to the evolution of man-kind. Instead of learning how to read and write books, we should have been taught how to code and write programs. Especially for women, we need to expand our views and get out there and compete with the men.

Hutner: You are helping to the evolution of man-kind by contributing to the jobs that women are needed for. We need female nurses and school teacher, just as much as we need women scientists and researchers. But the argument is not about male vs. female. It is about the funding money getting cut from the humanities.