By Chloe Baker, Senior Opinions Editor
“Why political science?”
“What do you want to do with that?”
These two questions have followed me closely throughout my undergraduate years — asked by classmates, academic advisors, professors, family members and eventually, by me. As graduation looms eerily overhead, I find myself forced to face the questions I’ve never fully resolved. But the longer I sit with them, the more I’ve come to understand that they’re actually the wrong questions entirely.
I am one of Stern College for Women’s only political science majors who isn’t pre-law, and I am not shy about it. In fact, I make it known. My response whenever someone asks what I’m majoring in is always that I am a political science major, “but not pre-law.” I say it with confidence. I have always liked being different.
Over the course of my journey as a poli-sci major, I’ve learned that there is so much more to this field than practicing law or having a career on the Hill. Through much research, reflection, personal experience and exploration, I have devoted considerable energy to figuring out what that “more” might actually mean.
For my first semester of college, I was an English major. I had wanted to be a journalist ever since I was a kid, and so naturally upon coming to Stern, I enthusiastically enrolled in the English department’s media studies track, with a concentration in journalism. However, unhappy and unsatisfied with the major, I ultimately decided to switch to political science.
I came to this decision as a result of two things. First, I had taken a political science course that first semester and loved it. Second, I reasoned that if I wanted to report on world events, it wasn’t enough to simply write well. I would need to understand the events themselves — the institutions and norms that govern society, the systems that drive policy and the steps it takes to set these events in motion. As someone drawn to journalism, I wanted the analytical foundation to report with authority. I believed a degree in political science would give me exactly that.
It turns out that my instinct was right, but not quite in the way I had expected. I didn’t fall in love with political science because it made me a better would-be journalist. I fell in love with it because it made me a more thoughtful human being.
For the past couple of months, those questions I’ve been continually asked have taken on a new weight. Not just “what do you want to do with your degree?” but something harder to articulate. Something that follows me daily and leaves me feeling completely directionless. I don’t know what I want to do with my life. I am overwhelmed by the possibilities that lie ahead — so much so that sometimes it feels easier to not think about the future at all.
Until a few months ago, I never thought I would become an expert on the struggles of the job market. Now, it seems like that’s all my friends and I talk about. I constantly ask myself if I should be settling for something because it feels attainable. Should I keep applying for jobs that I really want, knowing (or feeling) that all of the other applicants probably have more experience than me? Do I have the energy to face repeated rejection? The entire process makes me rethink everything. I wish I wasn’t such a thinker, such an analyzer or a worrier. If only I had chosen a more straightforward major, like accounting or computer science.
But I am a humanities girl through and through. And to take it a step further, I am a political science (not pre-law) major. I think. I analyze. I come to conclusions. I am informed about the world around me. That isn’t a liability — even when it feels like one.
While I sometimes worry that I wasted my time pursuing a major in a field I’m not even sure I want a job in, that fear vanishes when I reflect on what I’ve actually gained — and realize that I shouldn’t think like that at all.
The amount of knowledge that I have gained from this department is remarkable. I never considered myself an academic person until college, and I owe an immense amount of credit to the poli-sci department for allowing me to appreciate and invest in my intellectual self-confidence. On one level, I learned how states behave toward each other and why, the theories behind these actions and the different ways of conceptualizing power and conflict. But the single greatest lesson I’ve derived from my political science classes is this: things are more complicated than they seem.
That lesson has changed how I read the news, how I write, how I travel, how I interpret what I see when I’m somewhere new — the ways people live, what they experience and the political and social context that surrounds it all. The major informs so much of how I understand the world.
Then there are the people. I have met incredible people as a result of being a political science major and as president of the Dunner Political Science Society. From their questions, to their knowledge, to their thirst to understand more, I am constantly inspired and in awe of those around me. Additionally, the camaraderie in this department is authentic. People are kind, smart and genuinely there for each other. We bond over shared classroom experiences, inside jokes and the professors and classes that have taught us so much.
The professors in this department didn’t just teach me political science – they taught me how to think. I owe an immense debt of gratitude to Dr. Maria Zaitseva, Dr. Jonathan Cristol and Dr. Joseph Luders, as well as Professor Chuck Freilich, the visiting professor from Tel Aviv University whose course on Israeli national security was a significant factor in my decision to major in political science. Each one of them brought a depth of knowledge and a genuine investment in their students – not just academically, but personally – that I didn’t expect to find, and won’t forget. That kind of mentorship is not something you find everywhere, and I am lucky to have found it here.
The YU political science department information page describes the discipline not as a narrow professional track, but as an intellectual pursuit rooted in understanding the various systems that shape our world. The department emphasizes questions of power, institutions and human behavior, highlighting the study of anything from elections and public opinion to war and international relations. Law appears as only one of many possible career paths, not as the sole valid aspiration for a poli-sci major. I have come to support that framing deeply.
Two things can be true. I didn’t choose poli-sci because I wanted to learn about politics. I chose it because I wanted to learn about the world. Then somewhere along the way, it stopped being a means to an end and became something I loved for what it actually is: an enriching, bountiful spring of knowledge. Not a second-stop shop for a wannabe journalism major.
Despite all of the uncertainty, I can be sure of one thing above all else: I am a people person. I feel most alive when I am with people — talking, laughing, working together. My two main goals in life are to be well-traveled and well-educated. Those goals don’t match up to one specific job title, and I have had to learn to make peace with that. But they do match up, almost perfectly, to the past three years I have spent studying political science.
I can’t regret making a choice that is an expression of something so uniquely a part of me. I can’t claim to have wasted time when I have loved every minute of it. I have invested so much in my studies, in this department, the society, in the relationships I’ve made as a result of it all. What else could I have even majored in?
I am a person in love with human beings, with humanity and with the world. I have a thirst for knowledge, a thirst for travel, a thirst for talking to people and understanding them and the way they shape our world. Maybe that’s the question worth asking — not “why political science?” or “what will you do with that?” but “who are you, and what do you love?” Political science — this department, these people, these ideas — met me exactly where I was.
I still don’t know what I want to do. I do still wake up some mornings and feel the weight of the unknown pressing down on me. But I know, without any doubt, that I care — deeply — about people, about pursuing the truth, about telling other people’s stories, about making the world a more just place.
These things are all intrinsically part of me. And so is this major.
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