(credit to hendenger.tumblr.com.)

A few weeks ago, Julia shared her experiences as a German Studies major. I read the entry, nodding my head the whole time—as you can imagine, my experience is quite similar.

Before I started college, I told my grandmother that I would major, most likely, in German and Korean. One of the main reasons I’d applied to Scripps was their Foreign Language major program, in which I could major in two or three languages while writing only one senior thesis, and I planned to take advantage of it. My grandmother, being the child of German immigrants, never expressed anything but enthusiasm for my interest in their language. My decision to study Korean, however, confused her completely. She asked me, bluntly, “Why aren’t you taking Chinese?” as if studying Korean were as obscure and useless as studying Assyrian runes. I went from a straight A student and high school graduate to a disappointment of a grandchild with one decision.

The responses of strangers to my major hasn’t been nearly as soul-crushing, but I’ve confused almost everyone in my path. That I’m studying German, a “normal” European language, is an afterthought. “Korean,” people say, “That’s an interesting choice.” “Interesting”, as we’re all aware, is a wonderful word that can mean exactly what we think it means, or it can be a very politically correct way of calling something bad or weird. Considering most colleges don’t even offer Korean language classes, I can’t fault them for that comment. It’s the next one that gets me—“So, what do you want to do?”

If you’re a Religious Studies, English, Philosophy, History, Anthropology, or Music major, you’ve heard this. Our majors are “interesting”, but inherently useless—or are they? You know what I can do with my major?

I can work for the State Department. I can work as an interpreter or a literary translator. I can teach English abroad, or the languages I study at home. I can go to graduate school, learn another skill, and enter the work force. Americans, on our isolated continent, forget that knowing even two languages is an invaluable skill.

What does any of this have to do with my sports aspirations? Quite a bit, actually. Germany’s national soccer team has taken third place at the last two World Cups, and their soccer league, the Bundesliga, is world-renowned. South Korea co-hosted the 2002 World Cup with Japan, at which they took third, and soccer has taken the country by storm. Need more evidence? Anyone familiar with baseball knows about MLB’s attempts to expand the sport, and one of the most prosperous baseball countries is—you guessed it—South Korea. A handful of Korean players have made it to the major leagues (Cleveland Indians baseball caps are ubiquitous in Seoul, thanks to Chu Shin-soo’s success there), and the national team has had strong campaigns at the World Baseball Classic—they were the runner-up team in 2009, and took third place in 2006. They also won a gold medal in Beijing, and have had consistently good showings at Asian baseball tournaments. As someone who aspires to possibly work in these sports, there’s no doubt in my mind that I picked the right languages—and the right major.