Random Thoughts and Word-Salad
A Blog of Disjoint Philosophical Musings
Should I Major in Philosophy?
Posted November 24, 2011
Short answer: No!
Long answer: Maybe…
The supposed merits of a philosophy degree are well-documented on the internet, but there is not much out there exploring the downside. I happen to have a philosophy degree, and spent two years in graduate school, and am offering my personal opinion and advice to counter what I perceive to be misleading claims regarding the merits of a philosophy degree.
Yes, a philosophy degree will train you to think critically, but so will many other degrees. The difference is that philosophy will train you to think critically about things that don’t really matter, whereas other degrees have practical import that will make you valuable in the job market. A philosophy degree will not train you to do a job in any specific field, but then again, neither will any other degree. On-the-job training is where a person actually learns how to do a job in the real world. However, certain degrees will enable you to get a worthwhile job in a specific field, whereas a philosophy degree will not. They provide you with a foundation for training, something that can be built upon. Philosophy does not.
A philosophy degree can be a springboard into graduate school, but if you are thinking about going this route you need to be very careful. If you intend to go to law school, for example, a philosophy degree would be a good choice. But what if you wind up not going to law school for some reason? You will be stuck with a near-worthless degree. I knew a guy who majored in philosophy and was accepted into medical school, but he is the exception. I knew another guy who went to medical school, dropped-out, and wound-up selling cars.
A philosophy degree is the obvious choice if you want to attend graduate school in philosophy, but here you need to be very, very careful. Perhaps the only job a Ph.D. in philosophy will qualify you for is philosophy professor. Openings for philosophy professors are few and far between. They don’t pay very well at first, and you will most likely have to relocate to another state. Tenure can be difficult to achieve, and you will likely spend many years moving from university to university, state to state, until you wind up in a tenured position in a place you probably never wanted to live.
So what are some good degrees to get? Computer science or engineering are good, but you might want to consider a more versatile degree in mathematics (you can supplement that with a minor). A biology degree can be good, but you might want to take a more specialized approach: nursing, pre-med, or medical laboratory technology. Business or accounting are also good choices. But whatever you decide, choose very carefully, as you will be stuck with the implications of your choice for a very long time.
Categorized as: Education
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My Own Custom WordPress Theme
Posted October 29, 2011
So I made my very own custom WordPress theme, and I wanted to write a bit about the experience.
This site has always been hand-coded by me (click here to see the previous version), but I really wanted a Content Management System (CMS). I looked into Joomla, but the documentation is very poor. Drupal’s is better, but it is far too complicated for my needs. WordPress is simple, has decent documentation, and does everything I need it to do. As for the look, WordPress uses “themes”. There are tons of WordPress themes available for free, but I take a lot of pride in this site, and none of them were what I wanted. So I committed myself to developing my own theme, and I am very pleased with the result.
As you can probably tell, I am no graphic artist. Things are pretty well organized in a practical manner, with form and function taking precedence over style. There are no pretty pictures, fancy graphics, etc., though I do wish I had just a little bit of artistic creativity. As it stands, I can barely pick out a color-scheme.
As for actually making the theme, it helped that I already knew some HTML and CSS, although I did need to brush-up my skills a bit. And anyone who knows even a little about programming languages shouldn’t have any trouble dealing with the PHP. One problem I did have, however, is that a lot of the sample code on the internet just doesn’t work. If you are making your own theme, and having trouble getting something to work, it might just be bad code. Try figuring things out for yourself, or hunting around for another version of what you need.
There are a few things that I still need to work on. The sidebar is not quite the way I want it, so I will be working on that. The commenting functionality is not quite the way I want it either. One particular problem is that, on individual pages that have commenting disabled, there is still a blank comment area that has a border and a different background color. I will most likely be re-arranging a few elements here and there as well.
Aside from that, the biggest thing is going to be adding content. Much of the content of this site is in PDF files, which I intend to keep for printing purposes, but I also want to put that content into individual pages so that people can (finally!) leave comments. I will also be pulling some (not all) of the posts from my old blog over to this site.
All in all this has been a fun and rewarding experience; I was able to completely re-vamp this website and learned a lot in the process. I hope you enjoy it.
Categorized as: Website, WordPress
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Moved
Posted July 17, 2011
I moved this site to a new hosting account. I didn’t bother setting up anything that involves scripting, as I intend to re-design this site soon.
Categorized as: Website
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New Content
Posted July 27, 2008
I’ve just uploaded four papers that I wrote while a graduate student to the “wonderings” section.
Categorized as: Website
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PhinisheD
Posted July 27, 2008
As of May 2008 I am no longer a graudate student at OU.
