Psychology majors have been the butt of everyone's undergraduate jokes since the dawn of Freud, but never was it more insulting than when Jeb Bush called out psychology majors during a town hall meeting in South Carolina. Just to prove that there ain't no sass quite like psych sass, psychology majors are firing back by sending #ThisPsychMajor tweets to Jeb Bush, holding up signs that talk about their accomplishments just so he can see how wrong he was in his assumptions about our major.
"Universities ought to have skin in the game," said Bush, according to the Washington Examiner. "When a student shows up, they ought to say ‘Hey, that psych major deal, that philosophy major thing, that’s great, it’s important to have liberal arts … but realize, you’re going to be working a Chick-fil-A.'"
Before we even address the shaming of liberal arts majors, let's address the blatant job-shaming that is going on here. Jeb Bush seems to imply in this statement that someone working at a fast food restaurant is somehow "less than" for not working a job that requires a college degree, when truly — in this day and age more than ever — all work is honorable work. And frankly, as a person who did work in the food industry, and just about every minimum wage-paying industry there is growing up, I can attest to the fact that their work is hard and thankless, and what little money they get from it is well-earned.
Now let's double back to the decidedly unfair profile of psychology majors. I fully understand the stereotype of our major, because I am the stereotype — I had no idea what I wanted to do in college, and I knew that even as I signed myself up for psychology classes at the registrar. That did not, however, do anything to affect my potential in the work force, and any psychology major can attest to exactly how meaningful and powerful the lessons they learned in psych classes translate out into the "real world" — not just in your career, but in every single facet of your adult life.
The psychology majors who ended up following psychology as their career path are making enormous, necessary differences in the world. And those of us who ended up in another field entirely? We don't regret our chosen major for a second. If there's any question about that, take a look at these awesome tweets from psych majors below:
And of course, my own sound off:
#PsychSass2015.
Images: Emma Lord
