Senior Nichole Pearl will be graduating from Illinois State University in May, along with nine other philosophy majors.
Pearl sat down to answer a couple of questions from the Department of Philosophy:
What have you enjoyed most about being a philosophy major at Illinois State?
I have learned so much and how to argue where you piss off the other person off. I learned how to get my point across.
If you had to take one philosophy book or article to a desert island, which would it be?
Plato’s Cave.
Do your friends and family know that you study philosophy?
Yep! And the most (frequent) question is, “What are you going to do with this degree?”
What other majors did you consider?
I had a professor trying to get me in to “fine arts” and help pay for my education with scholarships and grants. I turned it away because getting a job is horrible. The other reason is the time you must put in to art is having two full-time jobs.
What are you plans after graduation?
Have a life! I am looking for a new job. Work with my sorority, travel, move out of state, finish two level of pottery, get a minor in fine arts, back to my arts and crafts projects, get more involved with NAACP (reinstate my membership) and AAIAP (Asian Americans/Pacific Islanders in Philanthropy), and Native American. I can now have time to date (lol). Thinking about studying genealogy for fun, back to school. Finish my genealogy on my family. Pull the Pearl family together and get a family reunion started on that side, get a family reunion on my mom’s side too. Have the biggest family reunion of Nichols-Pearl/Barker-Bottenberg. We got the Nichols family together after 40 years of missing and traced back all roots to West Africa. The most important work on my bucket list.
