I vividly remember the new student convocation and procession during freshman year orientation week. Dressed in black robes, the incoming freshman class was seated by college on USC's gorgeous Alumni Park facing the entrance to the impressive Doheny Library. Various deans and other important people gave their talks to the new students, culminating in a speech by the president of the university, C. L. Max Nikias, in which he talked about how even when we come in to "change majors for the third time", we'll aways have the support of our school.
"Yeah, but you're not going to be one of those kids who changes their majors," my mom said after the ceremony. And at the time, I thought she was right. After all, one of the biggest reasons I decided to come to USC was because it had a lot of great professors doing tons of research in my major, neuroscience. I couldn't wait to meet and learn from experts on the physiology of the brain. I had moved halfway across the country banking on doing neuroscience.
Now let's fast forward more than three years to now. I look forward to going to class every day, and I'm absolutely fascinated by the content I'm learning. I have met and worked with amazing professors who are dedicated to their research, and I've also spent a semester abroad getting an international perspective not only on the field itself, but also on how it's taught across the world. This year, I'm even conducting research for my honors thesis. In linguistics. And psychology. That's right: I changed majors.
So why are there so many negative perceptions associated with changing majors? To many, it's a symptom of the caprice and lack of forethought that apparently plagues our generation. It means that you couldn't suck it up and handle what you're doing now, so you have to pick an easier route. It means that you've wasted your parents' money and class space for courses that won't even be useful to you. And it means that you still probably don't even know what you want to do.
At first, I was scared to change majors. It was the beginning of second semester my sophomore year, and a lot of things were weighing on my mind: "This is completely going to change my career options", "Will I be able to graduate on time?", "What will people think?". But if you're truly unhappy in your current major, then you really should consider biting the bullet and changing majors. After all, there's no point paying tuition money for something that's not going to leave you fulfilled. And I can honestly say that I'm a much happier person since changing majors.
I believe that the reason so many students ultimately do change their major is because they received so little exposure to the realm of possibilities in high school. After all, what did I know about neuroscience before coming to college besides the one unit on it in AP Psychology? How could I have been expected make an informed decision based on this? And what about linguistics? I had taken English and Spanish classes in high school, but they never touched on the larger themes of language overall. With the pressure of rising college costs, incoming freshman are increasingly hesitant to register as undecided majors. They want to make sure from the get-go that their degrees will be worth something. And while universities that require students to wait a year or two before declaring their major might not be for everyone, taking time to test the waters before deciding on a specific field of study should definitely be more normalized. Otherwise, students will continue to constantly change their majors, and be forced to deal with the stigma.
