Emma Shinker

Features Editor

  1. Researching candidates in local elections. The next time you have to vote for the school board in your hometown, you’ll have the skills necessary to figure out the candidates’ real views behind their vague Facebook posts. 
  2. Writing passive-aggressive emails. Your coworker won’t even know what hit them, since you’ve spent the last four years honing your writing ability through essays and nice emails to classmates who haven’t started working on that group project yet.
  3. Winning arguments with strangers on the Internet. They may not know they’ve lost, but you will, because you’ve backed up your points with perfect Chicago style footnotes.
  4. Having the strength not to buy four different collector’s editions of the same album. The only thing stronger than your love of Taylor Swift’s music is the resentment of capitalism that your four years at a small liberal arts college has instilled in you, and your wallet is grateful.
  5. Keeping up with dinner party conversations about current events, even though you find the news far too depressing to keep up with. Your classes gave you a grasp of the history and conflicts at play, so you can always comment on those — you’ll sound like you did your research. Those times you participated in class discussions despite having forgotten to do the reading will also come in handy.
  6. Psychoanalyzing the stranger who is questioning your education. All those English classes have taught you to see things from multiple perspectives, so you can be pretty sure they’re just projecting, or jealous, or trying to distract you from the fact that they’ve hidden their wife in the attic.

All jokes aside though, I am so grateful for the education I’ve received at Wooster. I can’t speak for everyone, but something about the combination of classes I took has allowed me to come to the end of my senior year feeling like I’ve learned how to learn, how to think for myself instead of relying on memorized facts and how to critically engage with the world around me. It may be irritating when people doubt the necessity of my humanities degree, or stressful because I don’t have a specific career path laid out for me, but I know I have the tools to tackle whatever happens after I leave campus — and you do too! I believe in you!