As a little kid you are constantly being asked what you want to be when you grow up. Sometimes kids will have a solid answer all throughout their life and other times you could be walking across the graduation stage and not know what you want to do. Of course you say you want to go to college and pursue a degree but sometimes you don't know just what degree you want. Other times you think you know you want to do until you attend school.
I first attended Indiana State University during the Fall of 2013 semester with a declared major of criminology/criminal justice. I had always been interested in the crime scene investigator job. I always said it was the perfect job because you get up close and personal with guts and gore like nursing (My mom is an ER nurse so this is how this idea came up), but without the pressure of having to save anyone's life. I wanted to be a part of finding out what happened to them. I remember a lot of people changed majors their freshman year, but I thought I was content with my major so I would continue to pursue towards that degree.
The end of my sophomore year, my grades weren't the best in my criminology class and of course my mom was questioning me as to why my grades were, well what my grades were. Of course my answer for the longest time was "I don't know." Summer was halfway over by the time I realized the reason I wasn't doing too well in school: I was in the wrong major.
I ended up taking a semester off to fully commit to a new major. I thought about what I really wanted to do when I finished school and the first thought I had was how happy I cadet teached in high school. For two hours (sometimes I would stay extra for my senior year of high school), I would go across the street to an elementary school for a class I had signed up to do. I had to make lesson plans, plan projects, teach a lesson and even grade homework for a whole year. I loved it.
I didn't declare myself as an education major from the start because that's what everyone was telling me I was going to be. I am not one who likes to be predicted so I went down a different route.
It took me two years of college to finally decide what I wanted to do and I have even built on to what I want to do with my education major as well. I have experienced so much in college and also met a lot of people that have inspired me to even branch out and want to pursue teaching the English language to people. This would allow me to travel around the world -- which, I have not been able to do. Also speaking to other people, there are a lot of people who GRADUATE with a criminology/criminal justice degree and go back to school because they also have a change of heart and want to teach.
Moral of the story is, if you are going to be paying thousands of dollars for a piece of paper, make sure that paper allows you to pursue a career that you want to do. A career that makes you happy and that you are passionate about. In the end, no matter if it takes you one, two or even four or more years for you to figure out what makes you happy, go for it. We need more happy and less miserable people in the world and changing your major is not the end of the world.
