Even more of the nth degree. (This is it. Promise.)

The last two editions of Pink Slip have been more or less Public Service Announcements on interesting and slightly out of whack degrees that can be yours for the asking. The list of such degrees came from a piece published on Fastweb . Here’s the remains of this very entertaining list.

Is it me or does it seem a bit odd that Texas A&M – which is landlocked, smack-dab in the middle of Texas – would offer a degree in Nautical Archaeology? Not that they don’t have every right in the world to provide study of “the remains of boats and ships and the cultures that created and used them.” One of the courses offered is called outfitting and sailing the wooden ship 1400-1900. Now I don’t imagine there’s a lot of call for this, but the article does list job prospects in maritime archaeology and conversation. I suppose that’s a typo for conservation, but, hey, wooden boats can be a conversation starter (or ender), too.

This, of course, puts me in mind of one of the worst movies I ever saw. Coaster is a documentary about some guys from Maine who hand-built a schooner and then took it on a voyage to deliver lumber to Haiti and return with a cargo hold full of rum. Anyway, the entire enterprise was just ridiculously pretentious – including the schooner-builders singing authentic sea chanteys while they handcrafted their vessel – and the even more ridiculous upshot was that the schooner sunk off the coast of Long Island and the Coast Guard had to rescue the crew. Anyway, my sister Trish and I were laughing so hard when we left the Exeter Street Theater that we had to sit on the curb to compose ourselves.

Oceanography and Coastal Sciences at LSU seems to be a completely valuable and relevant program. We need a lot more folks to help figure out what we’re going to do before salt water starts lapping the ankles of folks in places like landlocked College Station, Texas. But some of the courses? Fisheries acoustics? Fish recruitment? We offer an open office environment, and leading-edge benefits including flextime and tuition reimbursement?

I will admit that one of the most fun colleges I took in college – back in the day when college wasn’t exactly known for fun courses – was a film class in which, each week we watched a movie and then shot the shit about it. The only film I remember was Birth of a Nation, which included a subtitle that read “The love strain is still heard above the land’s Miserere.” Which I remember because for months/years after one of my friends and I would put on fluty magnolia accents and repeat this line while fluttering our eyelashes. So who am I to criticize a degree in Popular Culture, where you study “Everyday life, including but not limited to everything that is mass produced by us and for us. Its subject matter is the world in which we live, relax and have fun.” This degree can set you up for a job in PR or advertising, in marketing, in teaching, in museum work. And, as degrees go, this sounds like one big BS-y chunk o’ fun.

As opposed to Puppet Arts. Which sounds scary. Not clown scary, but scary enough. What are they thinking down there at UConn? But it sounds like a kinder and gentler degree than one in Race Track Industry, which for all the mint julep grandeur of the Kentucky Derby and the Triple Crown just sounds kind of sleazy.

We’ll all have a lot more free time when the robots and AI take fully over, so a degree in Recreation and Leisure Studies could prove valuable. And since we’ll all have a lot more free time when the robots and AI take fully over, a degree in Sexuality Studies might come in handy as well. Think I’d skip the course in primate sexuality. Yes, I realize that we’re primates. But I did have an odd experience many years back in which a young bonobo (pygmy chimpanzee) whose belly I was scratching grabbed my hand with one of his feet and guided it down to his erection. Which pretty much put me off primate sexuality, as it relates to that kind of primate. 

Surf Science and Technology is offered, not as one might imagine in Southern California or Hawaii, but at Cornwall College in the UK. Surf’s up, dude. Gnarly.

Theme Park Engineering is a degree on offer at Cal State. It involves studying electrical, civil, and mechanical engineering – all of which seem to me more practical degrees than Theme Park Engineering.  At Penn State, you can get a degree in Turfgrass Science. Sorry, but the very thought of golf makes me yawn. But I get that this is a big deal for those running golf courses. And, oddly enough, this is something I know a tiny bit about, as my husband’s aunt and uncle (who were my virtual mother- and father-in-law) partly owned and totally operated a golf course. They converted their tobacco farm to do so. Bill and Carrie’s house was pretty much on the golf course, and over the years I learned plenty about greenskeeping, the pro shop, running a family business, and local and familial politics.

This series of posts was prompted by an article I saw on an MBA in Wine offered by Sonoma State, which got me looking for other offbeat degrees. For an undergrad degree in Viticulture and Enology, where you study “the science and practices of growing grapes and making wines,” you can head to Ithaca where, high above Cayuga’s waters, you can get a degree at Cornell.

Wildlife sounds like a fine degree. Who doesn’t want someone who wants to preserve species, enhance wildlife habitats, and control wildlife problems?

Anyway, that’s it for the degrees you could have had if you hadn’t been slogging through English or Economics or Engineering.

Thank you Elizabeth Hoyt of Fastweb for pulling this marvelous list together.