If you are entering, or have already entered your first year of college, you should know that however stressful it may seem, this will be one of the most memorable and exciting years of your life. One college aspect that can seem particularly stressful and daunting is the idea that you are supposed to know exactly what you want to do with the rest of your life.
You've just left the high school setting where you had to ask to use the bathroom and now you're being thrown into a whole new world where you have to make all of your own adult decisions. How is that fair? One thing I know that I did not hear enough was that it's OK to not know what you want to do.
Unless you've known all of your life without faltering, it's probably a good idea for you to go into college with your major undeclared. There seems to be some negative stigma among college students about being undeclared and what that means. Apparently that means you're wandering through life aimlessly, but I promise it doesn't.
As a freshman, I got sucked into that stigma and even though I had no idea what I wanted to do, I declared a major so that it would look like I had my life together. Unfortunately, since I hadn't taken any college courses yet, I ended up changing my major six times by my junior year.
Every time I took a new interesting course, I was sure that's what I wanted to do for the rest of my life. However, each time I changed my major and took the intro course for the new major, I realized it wasn't for me.
It eventually became a long running joke amongst my friends of, "What is your major today?"
My constant back and forth caused me to use up all of my free electives and eventually pay for courses I didn't actually need for the major I've finally decided upon. Your free electives should be used on fun classes like golf or cooking, not the Legal Environment of Business, like mine were.
The best thing you can do for yourself is to take your core classes and use your free electives on things that sound interesting to you. If you think anthropology sounds like fun, take it. If you love English, take your core English courses. Those first two years of college will help show you what you're passionate about.
If you're a freshman, do what I should have done and take those fun classes now and worry about your major later. Don't stress about it too much, you've still got time and you will make the right decision, eventually.
