You may have just graduated high school. You may be in your third year, fourth year, or whichever year of college. You may have already graduated with the degree you wanted. Whatever the case may be, I am going to say this: college is a jog, not a sprint. I am a senior here at Southern Miss and I have just changed my major completely. I know right?! Of course it was my senior year when I changed it. I am glad I did it now instead of graduating later with a degree in something I was not happy with.
I feel like when we start to head to college, we get excited.....duh, but I mean the excited where you start to look a little too hard into what your future is going to look like according to your expectations. You crave the life after college just as much as you do the life in college. You think you know what you are going to do. Hell, sometimes people do finish through with what they originally set their mind on doing. Good for them. No one is better or worse.
I started off with the idea that I was going to become a nurse and not just a nurse, but a Pediatric Nurse Practitioner. Once I got to college however, I began to change as a person. I would not say in a bad way because everyone at this age is still learning and developing personality wise. You are still learning what you truly love, like, and dislike. Once I got wait listed for the nursing program, I spent that semester minoring in Psychology. If any of you guys have read any previous articles from me, you will know the situation about my father and so forth. As I was going through my psych classes, I began to envision a different future for me after college. I could see myself performing experiments on different mental disorders and their associations with certain aspects in life. I immediately began to get nervous. This is not what I am majoring in, I am majoring in Nursing and that is that. As the semester flew by, I got my acceptance letter for the spring nursing program and I still had that vision. As I began to go through the program I was not happy. This is not what I wanted to do for the rest of my life at all. I had no passion and no desire to become a nurse. I wanted to have a life. I wanted to be passionate about my career and be passionate about my life at the same time. I could not see myself doing that with nursing.
I have always told myself that when I get older, I want to look back on my life and know I was happy.
I called my mom and began to tell her I was going to change my major to Psychology. I wanted to do research in psychology specifically and do experiments and to publish articles on mental disorders and their interactions with music, TV, video games, colors, etc. I told her this is what can make me happy. She supported me. Now I have a semester off and then 12 hours left to graduate with the Bachelors.
I think my whole point in sharing my story with you is that college isn't a race. No one looks better or worse based on how long you spent your years in college or how many times you changed your major. You have to take college day by day and really learn to do what makes you happy and to be confident in that decision.
When you walk across that stage, you will be excited for what your future holds and I know that I can't wait!
