I originally chose to major in Computer Science in part because I liked the problem-solving aspect of programming. Under a BSc, I still had room to pick up another major, but none of the other Science majors really appealed to me, so I started looking through the Arts majors and eventually came across Linguistics.

I liked thinking about languages, and I felt like I’d probably like thinking about linguistics as well, so I just followed my curiosity and enrolled as a Computer Science/Linguistics double major.

Challenge your thinking

What I like about Linguistics is that it’s quite a broad field of study, to the extent that sometimes the different areas of Linguistics almost feel like they’re entirely different subjects. This variety is excellent because it has exposed me to lots of different ways of thinking.

As I’ve journeyed into higher-level undergraduate Linguistics papers, I’ve also found that the areas start to bleed into each other a little more, and areas I felt were previously pretty objective get a lot more subjective, so it’s been very interesting to shift the way I think about these as I learn more about linguistics.

Studying Linguistics has also reframed my perspective on certain aspects of my life and it’s been fascinating to be able to recognise the linguistic reasoning for why I talk the way I do in different contexts, or why some words or sentences feel more wrong than others, among other things.

Tailor your study to your interests

What’s really great about the Linguistics major is that the courses offered at this University cover a lot of ground, which means you can really tailor your Linguistics experience to align with what you’re most interested in.

For me, I really enjoy doing logic puzzles and figuring out patterns in data, so my favourite course of all time is LING227 because it’s a syntax course based around analysing language datasets and then figuring out the grammar rules of that language. It’s a different kind of problem solving to programming, but just as enjoyable.