Many people are under the mistaken impression that philosophy is a useless discipline.
Plato, in his Republic , likens the philosopher to the navigator on a ship. To the uninitiated observer, the navigator appears to do nothing but stare upwards at the sky, doing none of the work necessary in order to make the ship move. But the facts of the case are that without the navigator, the ship will have no direction. In determining the direction one's life ought to take, philosophy may perform an indispensable function. The first benefit of a background in philosophy, then, is that it can provide one with the intellectual tools necessary to evaluate different possible life-choices so that one will be better prepared to find a meaningful direction for one's life.