Within your first year as an undergraduate, it’s likely that you will have a change of heart about your particular major. I’m here to tell you that it’s okay. No, you are not a failure. You’re just being realistic with yourself and true passions.
Since middle school, up until my freshman year of college, my mind was set on becoming a Mathematics Teacher. Due to my extreme obsession with numbers and formulas, I would sit for hours finding new ways to solve the same problem but in a different way. From then, I had my whole life planned out (or so I thought): I would attend college then move back to Nebraska to give live with my father and get my Master’s Degree while teaching at the place where I grew up at.
As always, fate had it’s own plan for my life.
My first semester was a breeze, I received some A’s and B’s in all my classes which made me think “I’ve got this college thing down pat,” but things took a different turn once my second semester rolled around and I began to get into my major courses. Let’s just say Calculus 1 kicked my tail to the max. No matter how hard I tried, or how many times I worked with tutors, I didn’t get it. Calculus felt like a foreign language to me and I began to question my purpose and myself. That one class made me feel as though I no longer wanted to attend college because what was the point? If I couldn’t get past the primary classes then how would I ever excel? I questioned. I felt as though I was a failure because becoming a Mathematics Teacher was all I would ever talk about. Going to that class twice a week was torture and after a while I began to tune out.
Until one day, my professor advised me and all the other students in the class struggling to either risk receiving a D/F grade or make the decision to withdraw the class. Those words hurt me to my core because I would never even settle for a B-, more less a D or an F. Ultimately I took the risk and stayed in the course, my heart was crushed when I passed the course with a C and I cried for a week straight not knowing what to do next. I began to change my perspective and become more open minded towards my deeper passions and consider the loads of other majors out there. In college, you’ll realize that there are a ton of majors that you could take up; you just have to do your research on them and visit different major departments to get a general sense of where you want to direct your college career.
My Education classes where I mentored in an elementary school for was where I was happy. During the time I was there, I taught Science to 4th grade students and I enjoyed it more than what I had thought I would. That’s when I realized I found something I would love to do, despite the subjects I was not good at, I could always brush up on them and start working on it. That’s when I vowed to myself if I were to stay in college I would pursue something that I loved and didn’t mind sharpening my skills in. I didn’t believe in wasting money just to torture myself. Changing my major didn’t mean that I was a failure, instead, it meant that I was following my heart to excel within something else more effortlessly aligned to my total being.
I was surrounded in an institution filled with opportunity to develop into anything I wanted to be and that excited me. I came to the conclusion that if I could spend my life doing anything that would be to be an elementary school teacher.
My change of heart about my major wasn’t the worse thing in the world (as I thought) it was actually a blessing in disguise. If I had never experienced what it was that I didn’t like then I would have never gone on to do what I truly loved.
It’s OK to change up the plan. Life is never straight forward.
