The age-old question, "What's your major in college?" never fails to pop up at family gatherings, social events, or even casual conversations with friends. It's understandable and I've come to expect it. I always excitedly answer "Communication Studies!" because I absolutely love my major and everything it encompasses.

I'm usually met with one of two reactions.

Reaction one: The person's face twists in confusion and he/she asks, "So, like, you learn how to communicate with people? What does that even mean?"

Reaction two: The person puts on a sympathetic look, one of pity or sometimes disappointment, and says something that translates to "That's cute" or "Wow, how easy. College must be a breeze for you."

Uh....no.

I just want to take a minute to address a few things when it comes to communication studies, because I feel like there are a lot of misunderstanding. It's not simply learning how to communicate with people. That is part of it, yes, but it's so much more than that. We build off of communication skills we've acquired throughout previous years of schooling and we take it to a much higher level.

We have readings that cover social theories, trends, statistics, experiments, and definitions. And it's not just simply looking at the use of social media, it's the how and the why – the big questions that yield even bigger ones and lead us deeper down the rabbit hole of uses and gratifications (look at me, throwing in a theory that we've gone over in class).

We're taught to stop and question everything around us, and never settle for anything less than the best.

We're taught how to improve our writing skills, how to work with blogs and other contemporary platforms, and how to make the most of the info we have in front of us.

We're taught to have a sense of professionalism but also a charismatic side, because that's just as important. Ya gotta have a little bit of fun with it.

This is for all of my fellow Comm students out there: you are appreciated and you are not wasting your time. It's hard work, a lot harder than most people think, but you have not made the wrong choice when it comes to your career path. I promise.

Speaking of career paths, you can basically go anywhere and be anything you want to be with a degree in Communication Studies. You can take on journalism, public relations, publishing, sales, video production, or marketing. The possibilities are endless and that's why I absolutely love what I do. From the very beginning, I knew that this was the major for me.

It's fun, it's creative, it's open-ended.

It caters to who you are and what you want. The professors in the comm. department at my college are some of the coolest people I've had the privilege to know, and the smartest. My respect for them goes through the roof; it's not easy to teach the classes they teach. Every student is different, yet they still find ways to accommodate our own individual needs, and instill in us the values we need to successfully enter the workforce.

It's a challenge, but it always pushes us to our full potential.

Let's stop for another minute to talk about the belief that it's "unbelievably easy" and "anyone could do it." I wholeheartedly disagree with that, and not just because I have a passion for it. It requires dedication. During midterms week in October, we (some fellow comm girls and I) had a paper to do that proved to be one of the most difficult essays we've ever done. Look me in the eye and tell me that comparing two different newspaper articles that cover the same story and analyzing how the media news sources use theories of priming, framing and agenda-setting to dictate how and what members of the public sphere are prioritizing is a simple topic to cover. No? Didn't think so. You have to put everything you've got into the work you do because it's not a piece of cake. Companies need motivated people who are well-equipped on the intertwining of media, culture, and communication. We are those people.

We didn't choose Communication Studies because it's a cop-out and it's the effortless road to take. That couldn't be further from the truth. We have to put the effort in too, just like any other area of education. So the next time anyone tries to brush off your major and continues to ride off on his/her high horse, offer a simple smile. Say you love what you do, then go out and prove 'em wrong.