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humanities are not useless
Chuting Cao
Instructor: Sarah Lynn Kleeb
Exploring the Key Questions in Humanities
11 September 2013
The Value of Studying Humanities Humanities are the subjects such as history, philosophy, and literature which are concerned with human ideas and behaviors. This is only a general idea. The deeper meaning of studying humanities is that it is an academic approach to understanding people better, a way to enable us to develop better not only through four years university life but also in one’s entire life. Some people may say that humanities are useless because people cannot make considerable money with them. However, that is not the truth. Once someone has realized the value of studying humanities, this will be beneficial for his or her life. I study humanities because I believe I will gain plenty of meanings of life through the learning process. Most people think that humanities are useless, my mother is one of those people. She is always asking me that why would you waste our money and your time on such useless stuff. However, my father does not think so, he believes that everything has its own value, even humanities. In this case, I strongly agree with my father. The reason why my mother thinks that humanities are useless is that people cannot make good money with them; the jobs related to humanities are not well-paid. Actually this is a generalization which people have commonly. Nevertheless, people who think so are wrong. The truth is opposite. According to the article “Liberal Arts and the Advantages of Being Useless”, the author explains that even people with Liberal Arts degree have pretty much the same chance as other majors to end up making good money. Although humanities are useless for maximal one’s salary immediately after graduation, and bring a slightly greater risk of unemployment immediately after graduation, there is good evidence that Liberal Arts majors tend to earn higher salaries by midcareer. Besides, life is short, and it should not be

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