Picking a major in college may be one of the most difficult tasks to complete during the application process. There are just so many different options and directions to take. When I was in high school, the majors that were very much pushed were in STEM, and for a while I was thinking about chemistry but was unsure.

I ended up moving away from chemistry because although I loved the lab element of it, it wasn’t something I was super passionate about. History is what really had my interest. It was so intriguing to me that problems had occurred in the past just kept repeating themselves over different centuries.

It was at this time that the election of 2016 was underway, in which I developed a clear interest in American politics. It’s just all I wanted to talk about and research, which made me realize that I needed to study it when I got to college.

Following my intuition and studying history and political science was definitely one of the best decisions I ever made for myself. If I had continued into a STEM career I wouldn’t have been happy, and this isn’t meant to say that STEM careers aren’t good but more to say that it is important to study something that you’re super interested in.

Choosing a major that interested me greatly helped me become much more inclined to actually study and work hard to get the grades I wanted. This definitely showed in first semester, because I never got tired of the readings that I had to do in my political science class. Therefore, I actually was able to understand the material in my class and do well because I was invested in doing well.

In high school it was difficult for me to do homework in classes where I was less interested, for example my English classes while I was good at the subject, were always hard to study for. Grammar and literary analysis was just dry for me and while it was helpful for the majors that I currently study, it didn’t really occur to me that it was all that important.

For those of you who are undeclared, I encourage you to choose a major that you are extremely passionate about because it’s so important to actually enjoy what you learn so you can make the most of your college experience. For those of you who are in the application process right now, I encourage you to pick a major that aligns with one of the classes that you most enjoyed taking in high school.

I guarantee if you choose a major that you're interested in, rather than choose one that your parents or outside influences are saying you should choose, you'll do so well in college. Doing well in college is the first step to making it in a career after you complete your degree.