"I majored in theatre arts at the University of Oregon as an undergrad but am now a psychologist and a professor at Northwestern University.  I work in the medical school doing NIH-funded research on LGBTQ+ couples and health. Even though my path has taken me in a very different direction, I feel grateful constantly that I majored in theatre. As theatre majors, we learn about art, music, and literature—and how those interact with, influence, and reflect the sociocultural and political time in history. We learn how to manage people (directing), how to manage high levels of stress (stage management!), how to write and communicate, and how to speak in public. We learn how to take feedback (a lot of feedback) and how to give it (roses and thorns). We learn professional behavior and how to manage our time. We even learn how to sew, build things, and the importance of good lighting. Theatre is also one of the few majors where one-on one-experiences with faculty is not just possible for undergrads, but highly likely and extremely impactful. This means more individualized feedback, more investment in our lives and trajectories, and exceptional close mentorship from faculty.

Particular to being a psychologist, theatre taught me to delve into the lives and worlds of other people with openness and curiosity, and to attempt to fully appreciate their perspectives. Theatre taught me about storytelling—a skill critical for sharing my research findings with others. In theatre, we concurrently aim to learn about ourselves. As the late U Oregon professor Dr. Grant McKernie often argued, knowing yourself is one of the most important things you can do in your life. My theater major gave me a very strong, very broad-based liberal arts education for which I am eternally grateful. But it also gave me skills that transcend the major itself and prepared me to be a whole person interacting with the world with some modicum of self-awareness—as well as a curiosity about other people and our world and a desire to truly understand experiences divergent from my own." 

—Cindy Veldhuis, PhD, BA from U Oregon in theatre and psychology, 1997, MS from U Oregon in psychology, 2003