As soon as we hit senior year of high school, our biggest concern is what college we are going to attend, but how can we decide that without planning out the next few years of our lives. Once you’re in college, the first question every student is asked by anyone and everyone is, What’s your major? It is probably one of the most difficult questions to answer because we have yet to entirely know who we are as individuals in society. It’s not uncommon for college students to change their major, during their undergraduate years and even when they are graduate students.
I honestly thought that when I entered college, I would stick to the major that I decided from the beginning, Biology. Unfortunately, the major I started with is not the major I want to graduate with. I love the sciences and I enjoy learning and having classes on Chemistry, Biology, Anatomy, but at the end of the day, Biology wasn’t the major for me. My sophomore year in college I realized that I wanted to instead major in Exercise Science. I always heard of people that changed their majors in college, and you feel like you don’t have the time make drastic or life-changing decisions because changing your major does feel like that. I did not have a career in mind when I chose Biology, I hoped by choosing the major then I would figure out what I wanted to be in life, and then I did, except it wasn’t in the major I decided.
Even though many students enter college with a decided major, approximately 50% of students are still undecided.
College is about discovering you, going to a class and realizing that you might actually be more interested in your elective rather than your core courses, so you decide to take more classes in that, and then you switch majors. Statistically, students change their major about 3 times over their educational career, and that is perfectly okay. The best thing for any student entering college is just to make sure that you take the core courses that many of the majors require now, Chemistry, College Algebra, and English.
But if you do decide to change your major, it’s completely normal, and it's a wonderful thing because then you have decided something on your own, you have made a choice for you about the future of your college career. Feel confident in your choices and don’t stress on not knowing what you want to do with your life, you are young and you are allowed to change your mind.
To the future freshmen entering college, it is okay to not know what you want to do. Just because the person next to you has decided on being a neurosurgeon when they grow up, does not mean you have to panic on what you will be. Relax and enjoy college. You discovering you, and so is the future neurosurgeon too.
