Slashdot Mirror
A Name for My Major?
kyala asks: "I am finishing up a seven-year BS in a degree program that I designed but can't come up with a name for. Going through my school's interdisciplinary studies department, I designed a degree that combines physics, botany, and computer programming. The degree is great and I love what I study. The only problem is that I need to come up with a title for it and am stumped. So, of course, I'm turning to slashdot for suggestions. Not only will you be repaid in karma, but I'll give royalties on any spontaneous donations made at commencement out of sheer delight at the name of my degree. Some details: I pretty much have carte blanche, so, besides unimaginative profanities, don't inhibit yourself. Of course, ideally, I'm going for accuracy. Barring that, obscurity will do. Some of the candidates so far: 'Techno-Botanical Inevitabilities', 'Quantum Astrobiology', 'Heuristic Ontologies', 'The Degree Formerly Known as Everything', 'Inevitable Prolificity'. One guy even suggested I forego words and try an interpretive dance."
My friend is taking Biology/Computer Science and they call it Bioinformatics.
By that standard you would be taking
Botanophysicalinformatics
I wonder if that's a word or not! It's 25 characters long!
The GeekNights podcast is going strong. Listen!
Or maybe that is the point, no matter what you call it, your going to have to explain it. I say go for it, and choose the one that gets you the best milage in the direction your going. Any of the other suggestions are way more interesting and funny than this one. For some, this approach will be a turn-off, but you didn't want to work with them anyway.
Good luck.
Since you are studying several sciences that are not directly related, call your major Liberal Sciences.
How ya like dat?
...and congratulations, but I really don't think you did yourself any favor in the marketplace, unless you're looking for a job that combines botany, physics, and computer programming. In fact, I'd have to wonder if the administrative department was on crack for letting you pursue such a trio as a single degree.
That said, maybe you could twist it around a bit. Would they allow you to use one (or two combined) into a single major, and make the other a minor? You've probably got enough hours for a minor and a major, I'd think. Mine was pretty relevant, for example. A major in management information systems with a minor in Computer Science.
Think about it. It sounds a lot better than what really happened, "I was going for a computer science degree, but I got messed up with 8 credit hours of a foreign language, and the higher math classes were taught by non-native English speaking interns who I couldn't understand, so I switched to Management Information Systems so I could get the hell out of there and work in the real world."
Give that to Mr. Recruiter. He says, "Wow. He has a major in MIS, and on top of that, a minor in CS! This guy is a cut about those other candidates." Your degree is an advertisement of what you "are", so put the best face on it because it is what you are going to be using to sell yourself. What kind of job are you looking for (immedate, and long term), and how can you turn your studies into a "wow" instead of a... "what the hell"?
If you can't do a major/minor split, I'd go with what the other guy said... Liberal Sciences sounds good. Or, you could combine two to make a Liberal Sciences major with another item as a minor.
If you "designed a degree" which combines these three fields, then you probably should have had some idea as to a common thread between these three disciplines that made the combination worthy of a degree. If, for example, you decided to focus your physics study on power generation, your botany on the way in which plants derive energy from light, and your software on embedded systems, you could say "I have a degree in Photosynthetic Computing."
If, on the other hand, you just took a bunch of unrelated courses because you happen to like them, and talked your advisors into letting you combine them into a degree, then your inability to articulate that combination into a single phrase simply serves to explain exactly what you did. You BS'd your way into doing something you like, and now you have a degree in BS.
So the question is, what is it that these three fields have in common that made you want to combine them into a degree? Therein lies the answer, or lack thereof.
It depends on what you're doing with these subjects, how you're integrating them. I'm double majoring in Biology and Computational Math (was doing CS, but I'd rather have a little more math and a little less hardware!) towards the end of doing grad work in mathematical and computational ecology, specifically in wetlands (or perhaps lakes). How to describe your studies depends on how you pull it together. :)
Working toward a usable PDA environment in the spirit of Newton OS: Dynapad
Usually, being a professional student isn't the kind of thing you run to brag about on Slashdot. There are always others who've been there, done that, and for longer.
Sheesh, evil *and* a jerk. -- Jade
If you "designed a degree" which combines these three fields, then you probably should have had some idea as to a common thread between these three disciplines that made the combination worthy of a degree.
Quite right and kudos to Phaid for making a serious response to the question at hand. The original question starts as follows:
So you turn to Slashdot? Jimminy Fucking Cricket, Man! First of all, if you're the one who "designed the degree" than you are really the best person to name it. Second, you certainly don't give us enough information to come up with a name for you. You spent 7 years studying all this and didn't come up with a name? The fact that you now want someone to "give you the answer" so you can copy it down on your diploma doesn't fill me with confidence that your degree is anything more than a triple major.
If, on the other hand, you just took a bunch of unrelated courses because you happen to like them, and talked your advisors into letting you combine them into a degree, then your inability to articulate that combination into a single phrase simply serves to explain exactly what you did.
I couldn't have said it better myself. But at the risk of being modded Troll or Flamebait, I wanted to state my opinion that if you are asking someone else to name the degree that you supposedly designed, then you really need to give some serious thought as to whether you truly understood what you did. And I'm not talking about if you understood the classwork: I'm talking about did you have any idea of what you were doing when you "designed" this degree?
GMD
watch this
Just use the one concept applicable to all three fields:
The Fibonacci Series.
He put his boots up on the table and made a face. "The sig," he smirked. "You can waste your life in search of the sig."