I came to WashU completely undecided on what to study. My first semester of classes ranged from music composition to plant biology to French as I searched for something that would stick, which is normal and often beneficial. In my second semester, I came across a class called Social Inequality in America, taught by Dr. Caitlyn Collins, which changed the trajectory of my college career: This was sociology.

I had no concept of sociology when I started school. Even now, there are times when I struggle to explain what it is. My notes from Dr. Collins’ class define sociology as “the systematic study of social inequality at the individual, interactional, and institutional levels.”

The sociology department has allowed me to explore the construction of race in the United States, disparities in healthcare experiences and outcomes across demographics, and structuring forces in different kinds of families. It has had me decode social messaging and representation in popular media, unravel Marx, reflect on foundational experiences that created my worldview, and rework the American and world history I learned in grade school. I come into my senior year well equipped to see the invisible structures that guide everyday life, and in my future law career, 

So here is my pitch for sociology, even if you already know you’ll major in chemistry or studio art or entrepreneurship. Some tracks, such as pre-med, require some kind of medical humanities, and WashU’s sociology department often caters its lower-level electives to these students.

First, sociology can apply to any field. You can better understand the development of your industry in its sociopolitical context and your role as a scholar and potential worker. For example, a future gynecologist will benefit from understanding the influences of American slavery on the procedures they learn. Having a deeper understanding of your own work can help you find your most fulfilling path and serve patients, customers, or a community more effectively.

Sociological knowledge can also support learning in other departments, providing extra information or invisible, implicit foundations for certain concepts. I have used texts from social theory in French, political science, writing, and philosophy classes.

Second, sociology brings the power dynamics and systems we take for granted into stark light, making them easier to address. If you hope your future work will contribute to a more just world, sociology can give you the tools to talk about inequality and discern the most effective way forward.

Many sociology classes are seminars, which gives students the opportunity to hear one another’s personal reflections based on their identities and upbringings. I have witnessed these often vulnerable discussions change the perspectives of those who grew up in homogeneous environments, cultivating compassion and challenging the status quo.

Third, sociology can be essential in understanding yourself in the context of the world around you. Since I was a young teenager, I have wanted to understand why people live the way they live, hoping to find clarified solutions in the process. I questioned the way we run schools, communities, healthcare, and governments. I questioned why we treat each other the way we do without thinking.

The watered-down answers I received in middle and high school did not satisfy me. People do not “dislike” each other just because of the color of their skin, period, end of story. Gender roles have not always been this way. The way we think about each other does not extend infinitely into the past, and it certainly does not originate from some biological germ inside us.

I am forever grateful to the WashU sociology department for teaching me some of the most valuable knowledge I have gained in my life. Whoever you are, WashU student, I hope that you’ll give this field a chance to enrapture you. Whether your most pressing questions center on socioeconomic class, religion, masculinity, work-family conflict, migration, the criminal legal system, medicine, the War on Drugs, colonization, or something beyond the million topics I can think to list, sociology can uncover something that shocks you or that you always felt in your bones.

Give it a chance.