It’s that time of year again. The day that all sophomores have been dreading since freshman orientation, the day that we never thought would really come, the day for which we are now realizing how unprepared we are.
Boys and girls, it’s almost time to officially declare your majors.
Now that the impending doom of major declaration is no longer impending— it’s here, in full force— it’s starting to sink in how fast the next two years are going to go by. We are basically halfway done with college at this point, and that’s kind of crazy. Two years from now, we won’t be thinking about what we’re going to dedicate our next two years to: we will be thinking about what we want to dedicate our lives to. Since we aren’t seniors, we don’t actually have to think about the rest of our lives quite yet, but we do have to pretend like we’re starting to, and that starts with declaring a major:
1. You get the official email notifying you that it is almost time to declare your major, which also means you have to stop pretending that this day would never come.
2. You cannot stop thinking about how incredibly unprepared you are to declare.
3. Panic.
4. More panic.
5. Sitting down to try to figure out your first move.
6. Trying to schedule appointments and meetings with the right advisors.
7. “I have no idea who I’m emailing or what their job is, but I really hope they can help me".
8. Looking up the requirements for your intended major and briefly second-guessing yourself.
9. Trying to figure out how you’re going to have time to do everything you want to do in school and graduate on time.
10. Or, on the other hand, realizing that you have more free space in your schedule than you know what to do with, and you have no clue how to fill it:
11. Being inundated with a pile of informational sheets and forms, each requiring a signature from various faculty members and department heads, which probably means you’ll be running across campus a few times to obtain said signatures.
12. “I really hope I’m making the right choice."
13. “Even if I’m not…. YOLO.”
… and you can always change majors if you change your mind.
As sophomores, we can continue living in the bliss of this college bubble we pretend is the real world, but major declaration is the first big step we take before the real first step of the rest of our lives. Buckle in kids, the real world is gonna be here faster than any of us would like it to be.
