As a current second year student in the College of Arts and Sciences, I’ve probably changed my major at least five times. When I applied to UVA, I wrote about planning on majoring in psychology to become a children’s therapist. However, not long after, I started becoming fascinated with the environment and wanted to work on policy to fight against climate change. Because of this, I came into my first year intending on majoring in political science and environmental science. Unfortunately, as soon as I took my first environmental science class I realized that as strongly as I may feel about climate change, I’m probably not the right person to try and fix it. In my second semester, I took a computer science class for the first time and decided I wanted to major in that, but by the end of the semester, I vowed to never take another computer science class again. These are just a few examples of me repeatedly changing my mind about my major.
All of those times that I have changed my mind have led me back to where I startedーmajoring in psychology. I’ve now taken several psychology classes at UVA and can honestly say that this is the perfect major for me. Nonetheless, coming to this conclusion was one of the most stressful times of my college experience. I was constantly researching different majors and how they might be helpful for my future career, worrying that certain majors may be better than others. I actually had several panic attacks throughout the last two years thinking about how confused I was.
After all of that anxiety and turmoil, part of me wishes that I had been right to be stressed out about the issue, just to justify all of the time that I wasted being upset about it. But, while it’s totally normal to feel stressed out about certain things in college, I’ve learned that being extremely stressed about picking out your major isn’t one of them. According to a study by the Federal Reserve Bank of New York, only 27% of college graduates work in an industry or career that’s related to their major (2019).
One thing that I learned at UVA’s Career Center during my major search is that you can find applications for your major for pretty much any career field you want to go into. For example, with my major in psychology, I can use the skills I’ve learned such as analyzing people’s behavior to better understand what they want and go into a field like marketing or human resources.
Don’t be like me and spend half of your college experience stressing out about your major. Pick something that genuinely interests you and remember that you can find qualities about it and what you’ve learned that will make you look great to any employer and your desired field. Trust me, majoring in something you really like instead of something you feel like you have to is so much better for your mental health. Good luck!