At Stanford I majored in Symbolic Systems. The elevator pitch on Symbolic Systems (or SymSys for cool kids in the know) it is the study of the intersection between humans and computers, which can include logic, rational thought, human-computer interaction, natural language processing, articifial intelligence, computer-generated music, neuroscience, etc… you get the picture. The major includes courses from the following departments: computer science, cognitive science, psychology, philosophy, linguistics, and even education.

SymSys now has its pop culture icon: Yul Kwon, a SymSys major, just won the 13th season of Survivor. Congrats Yul! From Valleywag’s coverage:

Kwon tells the [San Francisco Chronicle] he nearly bailed on the show after learning that producers planned to focus on his race, not his washboard. But perseverance, hard schoolwork and lots of Risk got him through. Too bad the article doesn’t answer his fans’ burning question: Does he prefer iteration or recursion?

Needless to say, Yul’s physique (the aforementioned “washboard”) is not typical of SymSys majors…