Some advice that I wish I would have gotten my freshman year: Explore as many different subjects outside of your major as you can! I guess that is for those of us who have an idea of what we want our major to be coming in, but I think this article still benefits those who don’t.

Early on in high school I planned out my career. I was going to go to a good college, major in biology, and go straight into medical school. I would start my career as an orthopedic surgeon in New York (as if I really had the ability to just choose NYC like that), then eventually move to Europe with the goal of working for a professional soccer team. Consequently, I’ve spent a lot of time, both in college and high school, taking science classes. That’s certainly not a bad thing, but looking back I would have liked to take a more diverse course load.

I definitely delved into subjects outside of my major -- psych, philosophy, language classes -- but in the end I kept cycling through the same small set of subjects. Invoking my hindsight 20/20, I would like to have taken more of what are typically considered “creative” subjects. Taking art classes was always fun and I always did well with creative writing, but I never really pursued them further than a distribution requirement. I had this idea that I needed to take mostly science courses (again, not necessarily a bad thing), so I didn’t venture too far from science.

Nobody would really argue that having a more diverse (academic) background is a bad thing. Taking that a step further though, I think it’s beneficial to pair things like science and the arts together. They’re fields of completely different nature, but the complement between them is seamless. Think back to a so-called Leonardo da Vinci whose ventures in science and art complemented each other incredibly well, and have contributed much to our knowledge and history in the process. For me it’s more of an interest in digital media creation than an urge to paint "The Last Supper," but my point remains. It is good to push your brain and your capacities in different directions. I think it helps give us a better understanding of whatever it is each of us ends up pursuing, because it gives us the ability to look at our field in the context of all of the other diverse areas of study that are out there.

I write all of this for much more than just sharing a personal anecdote. I write this in the hope that maybe somebody younger can read it and benefit from it. I write it in the hope that people will explore their tiniest inquisitive urge, even if it is totally unrelated to their principal interests. I think it is something all of us, certainly me anyway, can benefit from.