Answer for question 4497.

[sabotabby]

[Error: unknown template qotd]Do what you love and follow your dreams because either way, you're going to be mostly unemployed, and it's cheaper and also less disappointing to be an unemployed artist than an unemployed engineer. There are no jobs for anyone. Welcome to the grimdark post-work future where the majority of you will not quite earn a living in an informal, unstable economy rooting through garbage dumps for scrap metal.

Unless you can luck into a trades apprenticeship, in which case, do that. They haven't quite found a way to replace plumbers yet.

You can guess by my cynicism that I chose what, at the time, was a practical major in university guaranteed to net me a good stable job, just as the dot com bubble burst and left my entire graduating class scrambling for scraps.

(I think this is why they didn't let me give the valedictorian speech in high school.)

Comments

[the-siobhan.livejournal.com]

Hey, I went into sciences.

I probably would have been employable in my field if I'd stuck it out for my PhD, but then I would have to deal with academia. I'm not sure which is worse.

[sabotabby]

I have often wished that I had aptitude for STEM, but I know just as many unemployed or underemployed people in STEM fields, and my physical capabilities did not turn out to be such that I could pull really long hours.

[rinue.livejournal.com]

I read an annoyed defense of the Liberal Arts in the last Harper's, which pointed out that nobody's really looking to give good money to people studying pure science or pure math, so when people talk about the employability of "STEM" they mean technology and engineering . . . and since technology is made by engineers, that's really just one thing. The other letters are in there for padding so it seems like there's room for everyone and it's not all the eggs in one basket yet again.

[sabotabby]

I suspect this is true, yes.