Having lived through a couple of these "trends" in my own career I second what the above commenter said. I was nearing the end of my doctoral work in the U.S. when September 11 happened, and suddenly everybody was telling me that I needed to change my specialization to the Islamic world because everybody was going to hire experts in Islam. Which was true for a couple of years, but I was too far along to change, and resented people telling me that my area of expertise should be thrown away just because of a shift in world politics. I pity anyone who started studying Islam in 2002 just because it was on everyone's radar, finished their degree a few years later, and then found the trendiness had passed and it was just as hard to get a job for them as for anyone else. I imagine a similar thing happened to Russian a decade before that. Which is not to diss Arabic or Russian! They're amazing languages that more Westerners need to learn. I'm only saying that if your heart isn't in it and you're doing it for career reasons, you might well feel betrayed when you find yourself not as in demand as you'd hoped.
So my advice to you is to learn a language that interests you -- if that's Chinese, then awesome, you'll find a way, but doing it just because the Wall Street Journal says IT IS THE FUTURE! is a gamble. Might as well gamble on something you're into, right? Good luck.
So my advice to you is to learn a language that interests you -- if that's Chinese, then awesome, you'll find a way, but doing it just because the Wall Street Journal says IT IS THE FUTURE! is a gamble. Might as well gamble on something you're into, right? Good luck.
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