School of Parties and Easy A's?

As part of this week's required listening for my History of Rock and Roll class, I've had the Waylon Jennings and Willie Nelson song "Mamas, Don't Let Your Babies Grow Up to Be Cowboys" stuck in my head. Especially the line, "Let 'em be doctors, and lawyers, and such." \nI can't help but wonder if this is the same attitude many students have toward majors in the School of Public and Environmental Affairs. There are two kinds of reactions I get when I tell people I'm a SPEA major. Some think I was an aspiring yet unintelligent business school student and the School of Parties and Easy A's is my backup. Others point out the fact that SPEA looks like a chia pet with all the plants growing out of it. \nWhile I can't argue that when they start singing "sp-sp-sp-spea" to the tune of the chia pet jingle, I can argue the other point. You might want to sit down for this, but I never considered applying to the Kelley School of Business. \nThe business school is a great school, but obviously not for everyone. Otherwise, why would IU have so many music, psychology and education majors? Yet SPEA, whose building is physically connected to the business school, can't get out of its shadow. Perhaps it is this physical proximity that makes SPEA appear to be Kelley School Jr. Sure we have management and finance majors too. What many people don't realize (even though the name spells it out) is that our focus is on the public sector.\nSPEA also has other areas of concentration like public health and environmental studies. Now it is becoming obvious to me why someone who isn't smart enough for the business school wants to study environmental policy. It's just like accounting. \nAccording to U.S. News and World Report, SPEA's graduate school is ranked third behind Syracuse University and Harvard University. Perhaps if students spent less time looking at the party school rankings they would notice that SPEA is the highest ranked graduate school at IU.\nSome people scoff at the fact that I can graduate early after my "semester off." What they are referring to is my semester in SPEA's Washington Leadership Program. They think I spent each day touring the Smithsonian and going to happy hour. Sure, I spent my weekends as a tourist in D.C., but I was there to get practical experience through an internship, which is a SPEA requirement. Oh, and I forgot to mention I took classes after work. \nI won't be completely naive and say that no SPEA majors were too scared to fill out the business school application. I've heard one or two people say this, but I'm sure they were in for a nice surprise when the classes and internships actually required effort. Most of my friends in SPEA are there because they want to be and they've been challenged as much as any other IU student. \nThis is not a question of saying which school at IU is the best. We have many diverse, quality majors at IU. The majors in SPEA are some of these, and they are different from those in the business school. To compare the two is useless. After all, did anyone ever say, "The orange has a citrus flavor because it wasn't good enough to be like the apple"