Your Major is What?

After talking with many of my friends about our majors we all came to the same conclusion, adults think we’re absolutely crazy for picking the majors that we do. Truthfully I think if some of our parents, aunts, or uncles picked majors they loved instead of what made them the most money they would be happier. The problem is they didn’t and so now when we tell them our goals and aspirations they tell us we’re dreamers.

So I asked some of my friends what they say when their parents, aunts and uncles say “your major is what?!” With large eyes and exasperated expressions. Senior, education and American Sign Language major Shannyn Kleeman says “I declared my major in education my freshman year of college. Ever since I was young I knew that I was born to educate. When I came to college I fell in love with American Sign Language and became involved within the deaf community. From there I declared deaf education as my concentration. I chose these majors because it’s important to remember why we go to school in the first place. So many kids come to school thinking they are forced to be in a classroom; through my passion I want to change the thoughts of our upcoming generations to grow a love for learning.”

Which to me is the perfect reason to choose a major like she did. Marissa Gabaldi, whom is another senior American Sign Language interpreting major said “I am majoring in American Sign Language/English Interpreting because I enjoying working with the deaf community and love the language. After completing my degree I hope to work for an agency going to interpreting assignments in the education, social work, and mental health settings specifically. Also a future career goal of mine is to introduce sign language as a language credit in high schools who don’t have this program established”. Goals are great and Marissa has them!

On another page Amanda Leshko, a Bloomsburg University Alumna graduated in the spring of 2015 with a degree in marketing. She told me during our interview that she chose marketing at BU because she “did not know what exactly I wanted to do with my major at the time” which is actually a bigger issue than our elders seem to know about. Amanda says “there was a broad range of opportunities I knew I would find my niche”. Sometimes those dreaded elective courses we’re forced to take change your life as she goes on to explain by saying “my junior year I took a selling and principles elective, which lead me into the sales career I am in today. I did not know it at the time—but that class was the foundation for my career today”. Great work BU! She continues by saying “marketing links all aspects of the company and you get to work with many different departments. Study marketing was a good choice for me because I have an outgoing personality which makes it easy to relate with people. Marketing is all about creating relationships and communicating with many people. In sales I am communicating and building relationships with customers 24/7. I am happy with the choice I made to major in Marketing, because it lead me to find my niche in sales”. Happiness seems like a trend in people who pick majors that do not necessarily make sense to their parents, weird right?

Going in a different direction Andrew Turnue, a senior Mass Communications major tells us why he picked the telecommunications track within the department he says “I this track because of my passion for videography and filmmaking”. Many of you do not know this but BU has one of the best mass communications departments throughout state schools, they offer you so many opportunities to excel while here. Andrew continues by saying “it all started in highschool when I took a few classes for production and video editing. I guess you could say it has been my hobby and course towards a profession ever since”. If I do say so myself he is pretty good at it! Looking towards graduation day he says “I feel accomplished with what I have done and looking forward to taking my education the next step. Hopefully I will be attending graduate school for film making, at least that’s the plan for now”. Best of luck to you Andrew!

Devin Taggart is also a senior in Mass Communications field and he tells us “I majored in mass communications because of my love to create something out of nothing . I was never good with English or science in high school . I did however find my niche when I decided to try out a film production class”. Another elective course that let to finding a major? You did it again BU! Devin continues “I quickly realized that I enjoyed creating short films and sports packages for people to see; with the mini series and short films that I worked on, it is completely creative and I was able to have free reign of what I wanted to do. There is also some pride in what I do because I can make people feel certain emotions with what I create and I find that very powerful”. Devin finishes with “I’m very lucky that I’ve found something that I love so much that I can make a career out of” prime example Devin has chosen a not so standard major but he is happy and I know from experience not many college students can say that.

We may be dreamers but we know what we want to do, and we have some pretty good reasonings behind. We want to change the world not just make the most money, and I think that’s what’s important.