Meet Michael Sabbagh, c/o 2010

Why did you choose sociology as your major?

It's a funny story, actually. My background was in engineering/technology, but I was always politically active. My partner at the time was a sociology major and was working on a project for her senior thesis comparing attitudes on campus regarding violence and sexuality. It was survey-based, and I helped her with all the data-mining/qualitative analysis stuff, as it wasn't far off from what I was doing professionally, and I found it to be way more interesting than what I was working on in life. I took a sociology course the following semester and the rest, as they say, is history.

Where are you currently working or attending graduate school?

After I finished the program at Wayne, I moved to London to start a master's program at the London School of Economics. I became very involved there with student politics and the occupy movement. Fast forward a few years, and I'm back in Detroit, about to start a Ph.D. program in sociology at Wayne in fall 2014 looking at the failures of capitalism in Detroit. I'm also an editor of the Detroit-based activist newspaper, Critical Moment.

How have you used your sociology courses/background in the real world?

Hard to say. I do know that we live in an incredibly messed up, unequal world, and academia has played a role in perpetuating that. My hope is that we can also play a role in ameliorating it as well. 

What is some advice you can offer to future and current undergraduate sociology students?

This may sound cliché, but you've got to think big. The details will work themselves out, and it's easy to get bogged down in them. Don't believe anyone that tries to tell you that what we're doing is a 'soft science' or somehow not as rigorous or valuable as the STEM fields. University is not job training, and what you're learning now will shape you to be a much better citizen of the world than any engineer ever will.