Wesleyan University

Date: Apr 15 2012
Major: History/Histories (art history/etc.) (This Major's Salary over time)
I studied art history at Wesleyan then later took premed classes and went to medical school. My undergraduate education taught me how to be an A student so that I could go to medical school. But I was a B student when I got there. The subject matter greatly enriched my life. For example I can go to France and speak French and go to any museum and understand more about the art which adds a whole dimension to my life. I came from a lefty, middle to upper middle class family, and I took for granted the fact that Wesleyan was a very progressive, lefty school, which I liked. I spent much of my later career in a pretty conservative environment and that's when I stopped taking this for granted. My professors were great and many of my fellow students were very interesting. Creative enjoyment of drugs and alcohol was practically institutionalized with "Uncle Duke Day" in the fall and "Zonker Harris Day" in the spring. Maybe today's ambitious young achievers don't use so many drugs. Parents can only hope. There were, of course, plenty of kids that didn't partake even when I was there. A real learning experience for me was meeting lots of kids who were extremely wealthy and/or kids of famous people. That was new. But pretentiousness was frowned upon and people were low key about it. I, like many of my Wesleyan friends, got in to Wesleyan even though I was a mostly B student. I didn't take any math classes after trig in 10th grade and that was in a "regular" class. I took AP English and History. I was in the drama club. No sport. I volunteered briefly at an old age home. I took some art classes and stuff. I had good SAT scores (without studying, I might add. I had never met anyone who studied for the SAT) and I was a good writer and wrote a pretty scholarly essay, for a kid. I see now(if you can believe the stats) that today's Wesleyan students all seem to be kids who were straight A students in high school. I wonder what that is like.