Why I changed the name of my major
You might need to do this too
You need to know that every person comes in different shapes and colors. People have different opinions about so many things that you can’t find one that is equal to another.
Why am I writing all of this?
I finished my bachelor’s degree a year ago and since then, whenever I meet new people and they ask me what have I studied I always say that it was Chinese philology. But actually the real name of my studies is: Modern Languages and Literature.
The problem starts when I strictly follow the rule and tell them the second name. If we compare both names, it seems like the second one is more ambigue than the first one and it’s less comprehensive. Let’s say that philology is something well known or at least more easy to explain, it’s the study of a language in all it’s aspects. If we add “Chinese” to the word “philology”, we get that this study is actually for a concrete language: Chinese.
But, what happens whith the name of Modern Languages and Literature is that, first of all, it’s not clear for which languages we are talking about and what’s the meaning of “modern”. Second of all, we suppose from the name that what we do and the subject of study is learning a language and also the history, characteristics and movements of it’s literature. Nothing more, nothing less.
We lose so many things in this effort in defining the actual purpose of the study that for me it’s better to change the whole name and reinvent a new one which fits better and explains better the nature of my bachelor. No more need to explain exactly what have I learned there. It’s only saying Chinese philology and people from all the ages and understandings will get the idea. The same happens with the abbreviations. Not many people will understand them if they are not experts in the field. So the explanatory game will start again or, if not, you will be forced to find a new, more common and easy way to name these abbreviations. Sometimes less is not more, it keeps being less.
Nowadays, that’s also a big problem in most of the Spanish Universities. The branches of studies contain different degrees and those degrees that may be so interesting have a name for which we address them. It may be Law, Marketing or Medicine. But sometimes this name can be so large and vague that we lose the actual meaning. That’s one thing that in my opinion should be rethought and changed for the future. New students will come and when they start scrolling between different studies, they should have all the facilities in choosing the best for them. That includes also the name of the degree and it’s the point from where we need to start.