Need help changing my major to the right area of study?

Question

I'm a finance major right now however my passion is for this country.

I feel like we're at war even though we don't have to see it here in our own country, thankfully our men in iraq are dying to prevent the resources they are using against us there/here. but that will end soon.

I want to go into the NSA and some type of survellience, i dont think i have what it takes for the CIA, academic wise right now

any suggestions?

Answer 1

Government agencies of all sorts recruit heavily here where I live, so I know more than one person who works or has worked for one of them. There is a specific reason why they recruit heavily here, but it's pretty boring, so I won't bore you with the details.

If you want to get involved, change your major to Middle Eastern Studies and double major in that and Arabic. Or, you can do the major in Middle Eastern Studies and minor in Arabic, of the other way around. The most important thing is that you end up with some degree of fluency in Arabic, and a good, solid understanding of why there are political problems in the Middle East. (You could also go with Farsi, but Arabic is more useful, simply because there are more Arabic speakers in the Middle East than there are Farsi speakers.)

Don't sell yourself short on the CIA bit, either. They are looking for skill sets, not good grades. If you can speak an important language fluently, including reading and writing it, and you have a good understanding of the political situation in the area of the world for which you know the language, you are much more desirable to an agency like the CIA or FBI than some kid who studied history and got really good grades.

The reason I suggested Arabic should be fairly obvious, since you mentioned surveillance. There is still scads and scads of intelligence, both old, and newer stuff coming in daily, which cannot be translated for the analysts to look at because the US Government doesn't have enough people who can translate Arabic. Right now, many of the people who do speak Arabic are up to their eyeballs in work, so there's a real need to get more people who are able to work in that area. Another problem is that working in that type of area involves a fairly detailed background search for your security clearance. Many of the people who are volunteering are native speakers who came to the US from the Middle East, and it's taking a long time to process their applications because it's difficult to do a good background check on people who were born in foreign countries.

The Middle Eastern Studies bit is actually the least important part of it. Fluency in Arabic is much more important. The other stuff is good if you want to be an analyst, but if you want to do surveillance work, like listening in on phone calls or whatever, go learn Arabic. It's a growth industry right now.

Good luck.

Answer 2

Keep working on your finance major but start taking poly sci classes. Tracking the money of terrorists is vry important also. You track the momey you track the terrorists