College is a great experience. You learn things you’ve never known, meet people you never knew existed, and occasionally, if you are lucky you might make lifelong friendships. But the thing about college, is the realization that it is no longer high school, and you really need to get yourself together. It sure makes you miss the days of naptime and stickers right? No one can decide your path for you anymore, and you are completely on your own. But of course comes feel the burden of the weight of choosing a major, or even a minor. There are some students who feel a strong pull towards what they want to study and where they desire to end up. Then there are students who know where they have no idea how to get there. And lastly, there’s the rest of the college population, the confused and the indecisive.
One day you wake up and you realize that you love chemistry because of the insighful lecture you had and then the next day you want to do Calculus because you thought the homework was easy. Then you get deeper in the courses and you can no longer tell what the questions or the formulas mean and then you are back at square one trying to find a major again. There’s nothing wrong with being hesitant to choose a path, because no one owns a crystal ball to the future. There is no way to be 100% sure that whatever you choose will steer you to the best possible outcome, even if you feel a strong pull towards your path at the current moment. There is always the lingering shadow of failure that follows you wherever you may travel in your college career. But you must push past it. You must decide who you are, because that’s the only way that you will be able to choose. You must always remember that even if you choose the wrong path for yourself, the future provides you with the opportunity for new chances. There are many people in this world who have had to travel in entirely different directions from their original intentions to end up where they found themselves to be content.
Don’t flip through the course catalog, close your eyes then choose the first major that your finger lands on. Don’t choose a major based on what’s in at your University. Take a deep breath, let your brain clear, and find yourself. What do YOU like to do? How would you like to impact the world? Then open the catalog again. Perhaps there’s still no major with a perfect choice, with all of the classes you love, but maybe there’s that Photography class that falls under an Art major. There might be a logics class that falls under a philosophy major. You may even find 3 or more classes that interest you that falls under the same major. But then you may be in a dilemma of also finding there’s a class or two that you absolutely despise. Don’t let that take you away from the classes you want to take or even the classes that sound remotely interesting. Don’t think of it as settling either, because you aren’t. The moment you take this mindset, you may have a breakdown, or lose your interest in continuing your study. No one wants to complete college just going through the motions.
Use your interests to fuel your passion to study, and use your weakness as means to better yourself. Find a way to motivate yourself to get through that class you hate because ultimately, strengthen your weakness makes you a stronger individual and perhaps a better candidate for certain fields in the long run. Even if you feel that you have chosen the perfect major ,most likely it is in your field of strenghth, so be sure to take some classes to better your weaknesses as well. Don’t close youself off from the possibility of taking classes in other fields, and be sure to utilize your resources to become a well rounded well prepared indivdual.
Stop stressing about your major, and thinking that you are running out of time. You aren’t, picking a wrong major isn’t the end of the world, and picking the right major also isn’t the end. Youve still got ways to go after college, so relax open the catalog book again and choose a major!