By: Paige Hollowell
It wasn’t until the first semester of my junior year that I finally settled on the right major, having already gone through two others. I’ve always been an indecisive person, so picking something that determined my entire future wasn’t something that came easily to me. After having gone through that, and the subsequent questions from everyone I know about my uncertain future, I devised a three-step guide so that you can avoid all of my mistakes.
Step One: Follow the Money
Coming into college you’re likely to take adults’ opinions into consideration when you’re making your decision and more often than not, they’re telling you to do something that will make money. Most parents would prefer if their kids became doctors or engineers, because those paths are thought to be the most lucrative. However, nobody can predict the future. The industry was begging for computer scientists a few years ago. Now, the rise of automation and AI has forced companies to cut down their workforce, limiting the jobs available.
As a Freshman, I was a Psychology major. I wrote my application essays on movies, as I’ve always been fascinated by people and their stories. This led me to wanting to study people and how their lives affect them. Interesting idea of what psychology is aside, I failed to take a few things into account. First, I didn’t really want to be a therapist; I’ve always felt I’m too blunt for that. Second, I’ve never wanted to be a researcher, and lastly, I don’t want to go to graduate school, which you certainly need to do for any career in psych.
Step Two: Pick Something Even Worse
My second choice was somehow thought out even less. I have always loved languages. “Dora the Explorer” was my favorite show as a toddler, I have had Duolingo since 2014, and French was my favorite class throughout middle and high school. I even had a second major in romance studies that I recently switched to French and francophone studies. With that logic, I decided that I wanted to study language as a concept because I was fascinated with how people communicated. If only there was a major that studied that more specifically! For some odd reason, this led me to Linguistics. I decided that this was a great idea and I’d be a French teacher or interpreter (although I only wanted to teach adults). I was so close to what I actually wanted to do, and yet so incredibly far. Don’t get me wrong, linguistics is interesting, but I knew I didn’t want to go to graduate school. And to be honest, after three classes, I just wasn’t enjoying studying it in a formal setting.
At this time, I was so lost that I also picked up a minor in professional writing, just to be sure that I was learning something that would be useful in whatever path I take in the future. For a while, I was convinced that I wanted to go into the publishing industry, but one professional writing class showed me I didn’t want to do that either. This minor requires an internship, which gives me some real experience that I can use while hopping between specializations. If I can’t commit to a major, at least I can have an internship under my belt.
Step Three: Follow Your Gut
Once I hit my breaking point, I opened up the major catalog for probably the millionth time in my undergrad career and saw the communication page. I read through all of the specializations and immediately knew that strategic communication was the one for me.
Once I decided communications was the right path for me, I was confronted with a whole new fear; there is a stereotype around communications and struggling to find a job after college. I was so scared of failure and wasting my time that I ignored my true path. Ironically, I ended up “wasting” almost three years of undergrad that I could’ve spent getting valuable experience in the field. However, I still don’t feel like they were a waste. In that time and those majors I learned a lot about myself, and sometimes learning what you don’t want to do is exactly what you need to motivate you to succeed in the path you’re meant to take.