When you first arrive at college, choosing your major seems like the scariest decision of your life. How are you supposed to choose what you want to do with your life at 18 years old? It is comforting to know that you can change your major if you want to, and there is nothing like realizing you have made the right choice. Here are some ways you know you’ve found the right major:
1. You start to get to know your professors.When you are interested in a class, you might also become interested in what the professor does in the field, and you might end up becoming friendly with them!
2. You realize that you actually enjoy your classes.If you have general education requirements, you know how it feels to think you’re wasting time in those classes. When you start taking classes for your major, you find them much more enjoyable and interesting.
3. You think that you will actually use what you’re learning outside of class.
You know the feeling. When are you ever going to use the Pythagorean theorem if you’re not going into a math-related field? When the information taught in class seems like it has a practical use in your life, you know you’ve found the right field.
4. You feel driven to do your best on every single assignment.
If you don’t really care about the class, you may feel the urge to do just enough to pass the class with a decent grade and move on. But when you’re interested in what you are learning, you want to put your best foot forward and succeed.
5. You feel like those assignments aren’t just busy work.
Homework is meant to aid your knowledge of the topic you are learning about, but sometimes it feels like you’re doing work for the sake of doing work.
6. If you’ve switched into your desired major, you finally feel like you are happy.
Before I switched my major, I was unhappy with the classes I was taking. Now in my current major, I really love my classes and what I’m studying.
7. You get so engaged in your work, you realized you haven’t eaten in hours.
It can definitely happen. You’re working on your big midterm that you get so engrossed and all of a sudden you look at the time, and it’s already 3 p.m.!
8. You sometimes annoy your friends by talking about it so much.
I’m definitely guilty of this. You may be so excited about what you just learned in class, but your friends may not want to hear you ramble on about it for an hour — multiple times throughout the day.
9. You actually get up for you 8 a.m. classes.
Having class that early in the morning can make it so tempting to sleep through it. When you actually like the class you’re taking, you make more of an effort to show up.
10. You can see yourself enjoying a job in that field.
When you start seriously looking into internships and jobs in your field and can figure out what you want to aim for, you get excited that it doesn’t seem like just another job.
11. You honestly cannot see yourself studying anything else.
When you look at other majors, and could never seriously consider switching your major to anything else, you’ve found the right field for you.
Some people are lucky enough to know what they want to study the minute they set foot on a college campus. For the rest of us, it takes time to figure our futures out. But there is nothing quite like the feeling of realizing you know what you want to study and what you want to do with your life.
