I am a Communications Studies major, Psychology and Business minor, and am also getting a marketing certificate. Every quarter I take one class in three out of four of these, and one class for fun, like art, philosophy, history of Buddism, or Russian Literature.

So the question becomes, what am I learning in these classes, these majors? Psych, marketing, business, communications. Basically I am learning how to have common sense. How to do absolutely anything and nothing in particular. When people ask me what I want to make a career out of, I alternate between saying I want to own an ice cream shop and be the person who changes the score at baseball games. Because really, everything I am learning will help me in whatever I decide to do, but all my options have been left completely open. Unless I want to be an engineer.

Having a specific major can be very helpful, do not get me wrong. Engineering is a paradigm example of this. But other than a couple very specific majors, I would argue that they hardly matter at all. As long as you go to college and learn about hard work and have a general education, you really can do anything you want after you graduate. How many people actually end up with a job in their major anyways? Yes, colleges advertise that a certain percentage of their graduates get a job in their field, but tell me more about what a job in the field of business, psychology, communications, or marketing filters out? Almost any job I get after college will be considered in my field, and as much as I support being able to get any kind of job, it is hard to argue that my major will determine what I do in life.

I know I am being very specific to myself, but what if I was an English major, or economics, or even biology? None of these majors, almost no major, is a direct script of the road you will take in life. And even if the major seems to be, many, many people will change their minds about their profession and do something different in their life anyways. To me, what this means is that you should do what you want in life, even if its unrelated to the set of 15- 20 classes you took in college. Honestly, how can you tell me that that many classes qualifies you as so much more qualified for a specific job that it can not be attained without them? It just does not.

So if you are determined and inspired you will do what you love in life. You will work hard and dedicate to something, and you will, even if it takes a couple of tries, succeed. So stop thinking of majors as a menu for how you will spend every day for the rest of your life and use it, and college, for what it really should be. A chance to explore things that make you want to learn more, a time to try everything you even think you could like, and the best chance you will ever have to figure out an idea of something that would make you want to get up in the morning.

I love all my classes in my majors, and know that even though they are not a road map to my future, I will find them again. And I also give myself a chance to learn about the world every quarter in a way I never will have the opportunity to again.

The take home message is this: take classes you want to take. Because college classes are more similar to the real world than you think, and if you take classes that inspire you, the rest will fall into place.

And take philosophy.