You experience an uncountable amount of frightening things while in college. Hearing the words "pop quiz" in class, sleeping through your alarm and missing a test, looking in the mirror after pulling three all-nighters in a row. It's a pretty scary place. One of the scariest things that can happen though is being one year and two weeks away from graduating and realizing that you might... not... actually... like... your... major....... What do you do then? Panic? Switch majors?? Drop out??? Keep going on the same path, just hoping you won't hate your future job AND life???? I have absolutely no idea, and that is very worrisome because, if you haven't guessed already, this oddly specific scenario happened to me, just last week.
Multiple red flags kept popping up during my pursuit of a marketing degree. I chose it because I thought it was the "funnest" business major and because I like social media. I am generally bored in the classes, with the exception of my social media class. I do not like the work I am currently doing in the field. I just kept ignoring all of these until I started to do some in-depth graphic design work for a class project and realized I loved it. Graphic design might actually be my passion. I was the most focused I had been in a while and was having the most fun I'd probably had since... being in college. Coming to that realization was very frightening because that made me have to think about whether I was pursuing the right degree for me or not. I talked to my boss about it, and she suggested pursuing a graphic design degree, but I can't just do that, right? I can't just switch my degree as an almost senior, right? I can't make tens of classes become unusable when I already took out thousands of dollars in loans to pay for them, AND THEN take out thousands of dollars in more loans just to start all over again, right? I can't just leave all of the friends and professors I love and are comfortable with to go to a different part of campus, a completely different school within the university, to just become basically a lonely Freshman again, right? I can't just drop out of an amazing business program that I worked so hard to join, that I have so many great friends in, right? I can't just stay in school for 1+ year(s), right? I can't just pursue something that I actually seem passionate about because I'm scared of change, right? RIGHT??
I DON'T KNOW.
Wait, maybe I can just finish out this degree and get a graphic design one in a few years after being in the marketing world for a while. Would I really come back and get it though? Or, would my pride, laziness, and/or finances get in the way of doing that? Okay... but maybe I can just double major in both. Would I be able to do that though? What about my ever-increasing debt, ever-dwindling time, and nonexistent sanity?
???
In the grand scheme of things, I am very young and have my whole life to figure this out, but that's the problem, I have to figure my life out now in order to have the possibility of figuring it out later.
And as I lay here stressed over business classes that I'm not doing particularly well in and look at my marketing-packed Summer and Fall schedules with a frown, all I can hear is "pursue your passion," and "it's never too late to change your major," but is it?
