An anti-SOC bias permeates this campus, which is just silly really, seeing as we are the information gatekeepers. (I’m bolding important words so you can rightfully claim a communication minor after reading this column.) But that plays into the stereotype that public communication is an easy, useless major. A stereotype that I have accepted for too long, but no longer.
Around this time, freshmen will be fleeing the SIS majors that drew them here, realizing that choosing their life-course at the age of 18 doesn’t always work out, nor does it have to.
AU, a liberal arts school, offers a plentitude of options, but one worth considering is public communication. These lost souls should not be deterred from joining SOC by what the detractors say, even if said detractors engage in word play. And they will engage in word play.
“I think they should rename public communication to public common sense,” quipped my frenemy Erik Jacobsen, senior, barely audible over all the employers knocking his door down for that sociology degree of his. “Why don’t you use your ultra social media skills to Tweet that one?”
Hurtful words, but as a communication major you develop thick skin. (Just kidding, please don’t leave mean comments!) I assume Jacobsen’s comment referred to the notion that SOC only teaches writing, speaking and blogging, skills that we should have absorbed in either the first few grades of elementary school or through general life experience.
In terms of learning to write earlier than college, I will agree that we learned how to string letters together long ago, even if T9 and spell-check later robbed us of that ability.
However, in terms of effective writing, by which I mean writing with a strategy for an end goal, I really only learned that in college.
William Strunk Jr. writes in the introduction of his book “The Elements of Style,” “once past the essentials, students profit most by individual instruction based on problems of their own work.”
Strunk excuses the brevity of his book by explaining that you can’t learn writing from a book, it takes practice and specialized instruction. That his book has sold so well only speaks to the lack of fundamentals with which students come to college.
Only by majoring in public communication will you get enough practice writing concisely.
My public communication classmates and I often complain every class emphasizes the same skills, but writing is a skill that takes time, even multiple classes, to get good at.
Why does writing well matter? Just go through AU’s CareerWeb and you’ll notice how many job advertisements, regardless of the industry, emphasize the necessity of writing well.
When I checked, 16 of the most recent 20 advertisements emphasized strong writing skills as a qualification for the job. It seems strong communication skills set you up to do well in most jobs that don’t involve entering numbers into a database.
The trends of employment in American University’s 2010 graduation class reflect this.
The Career Center lists the employment data of graduates from SOC, CAS, SIS and SPA. Among these schools, SOC graduates are more likely to be employed.
However, Business Week reports 76 percent of Kogod’s 2010 class now holds a job, one percent less than SOC graduates. From the numbers, SOC degrees, including public communication, do not appear to be as useless as sociology majors suggest.
To an extent, Jacobsen is right. Given the importance of writing well and the benefits of doing so, deciding to major in public communication is just common sense.
Adam Gallagher is a senior in SOC.
