Linguistics is a scientific study of language, 
so not particular languages, per se, but in general
how does language work, how does it get represented in the mind?
what are the possible differences between languages, 
and what are the similarities that we find across all human languages?
There is phonetics, which is the study of sounds,
Phonology, which is the study of how sounds pattern together, 
and morphology, which is the study of how words are put together. 
So the smaller components of words.
There's syntax, which is the study of sentence structures, 
so how words are put together into sentences, 
There's semantics, which is the study of meaning
and pragmatics, which is the study of meaning in context. 
From my point of view, this is one of the most important sciences for studying humanity, 
The other ones being anthropology, psychology and sociology, 
because if you look at the evolution of animals, 
the thing is it seems to set us apart, is that we have language. 
it's what gives us the ability to organize, and to build things, 
and to be a part of the communities that span the entire planet, 
What happens when you study linguistics is I find it to be freeing,  
We spend so much of our lives being told that we're bad at talking. 
That you can't talk this way, you can't split an infinitive, 
You can't strand a preposition. 
One of the nice things about linguistics, is probably my favourite thing. 
Is that you actually learn how language works, 
not how some stodgy old professor, or eighth grade English teacher, told you it's supposed to work
Our faculty rocks, they are so accessible, when you go to them with a problem they'll figure it out with you. 
Sit down with you, and at the end of the day you still feel like the person who figured out the problem. 
even though they were maybe giving you a bit of a guide
Linguistics is a much smaller program
and the professors know you by name almost within the first couple of weeks, 
They want you to succeed they know who you are, 
You're not just a number in the crowd
I have this sign up because there's this student Amy, 
who comes to every single office hour, 
and then she always apologizes: Oh, well maybe you would rather do class prep or something. 
Its good when students come and check because then you get a better sense of 
whats not working in the classroom, so I like it. 
Of course, if you're talking about an undergraduate degree, 
there's always the option of going to graduate school. 
There's lots of applications of linguistics which are actually very profitable
Speech recognition, speech synthesis, are applications of phonetics, 
There's people who are interested in computer science and artificial intelligence.
There's tight connections between linguistics and those fields in particular linguistic semantics
So for that, linguistics is a great preparation. 
In particular what people often do is go into say, information technology companies in the private sector.
There's also depending on what their focus was in their undergraduate program, some people go on to do speech pathology.
And a third class of people I suppose are people who go into government policy work. 
Well for me linguistics is the best thing! It's the funnest thing. 
Because one thing that never ceases to amaze me, is that people still today figure out generalizations about even English,
So people have studied English a lot, but there's still puzzles about English, 
That no one has figured out, and that you can work on. 
Linguistics is fresh, everybody gets a chance to contribute because it's so new, and it's so exciting,
and it's a brand new science, and being able to be a scientist and really, I think, maybe tie with philosophy and art,
One of the main reasons to go to university.
So if you want to be a scientist but you want to be a scientist where, 
You feel like you're on the cutting edge, linguistics is definitely your field
I think quickly get into linguistics and just discover and learn new things.
