This is Part III to an unplanned series of posts where I talked about what I actually learned as a result of studying different things in college (you can find Part I: Engineering, here, and Part II: Business, here).

I struggled for a long time to write this, which perhaps is an interesting statement in and of itself. Did I not really get anything out of my liberal arts degree? Indeed, my engineering education had taught me how to analyze a circuit to find the current flowing through a particular branch, or how to build an XGBoost model for a classification task. My business degree had taught me that debits go on the left side and credits on the right side for a balance sheet. I learned that the NPV of a $1 perpetuity with growth rate g and discount rate r was 1/(r-g). These things were clearly more applicable, right? (They weren’t. The real, worthwhile things I learned were how to tackle hard and novel things through engineering and how to drive long-term impact through business.)

But still, it may feel strange to someone that majors in liberal arts and a more “hard” major (e.g. STEM, though there are other possibilities beyond STEM) to contemplate what they’ve learned from their liberal arts degree. For me, I’ve taken a year of world literature and a year of philosophy courses, and I honestly can’t say that I think I got anything out of them, beyond a further appreciation for SparkNotes. My liberal arts degree has forced me to take some of the most boring classes in my college career, some of which I consider a complete waste of time. I took an economics class where I realized I had either went on my phone or fell asleep at least once every class.

And yet, my liberal arts degree has forced me into discovering some of the most interesting classes in my college career. I took a couple of psychology classes that I truly feel have reshaped my approach to life; my freshman year I took a civic engagement class that exposed me to some incredibly interesting people. I’m currently taking a nutrition class that I’m finding incredibly relevant to my day-to-day life (funny enough, the course number is NTR 365).

I’ve realized that the value of my liberal arts degree isn’t the liberal arts classes as much as the liberal arts education. I don’t think I’d personally find much value in studying French literature or Philosophy or XYZ studies. I didn’t expect to find that much value in an intro psychology class either - I had merely assumed that I’d be memorizing diagrams of the brain and a litany of symptoms for any number of the terrible things listed in the DSM-5. And yet, I feel so thankful for the fact that I was forced into taking some of the most amazing classes in my college experience. Taking classes in nutrition and psychology is not an automatic thing for a business/engineering major; I’m glad I was forced into it.

We can’t control luck, at least as far as whether we get good luck or bad. What we do control, however, are the number of times we roll the dice. Sure, any particular attempt at asking someone out or applying for a job has a certain probability of a yes or a no, and those odds might not be in our favor all of the time. But the only way to end up successful in those pursuits is to put ourselves in the way of good luck. Taking classes from all over the university has resulted in some strikeouts and some home runs - at the end of the day, it’s the home runs that you’ll remember. Make your own luck!