When I was young, I was always told that I need to prepare now for a career that is going to make me a lot of money. My parents worked so hard so that I could pursue whatever I wanted, but they still always told me that I needed to find a career that would provide me with a stable future. So when I came to college, I thought that the right path to take was to be a science major, like what most of my other friends from high school did. I was always involved in science in high school, so it just seemed like the right path to take.
When I got to college, however, all of that changed. My first day of college, I decided that I was going to make a change. I knew, somewhere in my subconscious or somewhere, that being a biomedical science major was not the right idea. I went to my adviser and asked to change my major. The problem was, I didn't know what I wanted my major to be. I thought back to high school again, and while I was always involved in science and math, my other love was in the liberal arts. I always loved my English and History classes, and when I did Academic Decathlon my senior year, my favorite subject was Art. So my first semester, I decided to take one of each: History, Art History, and English, and from there, I would decide what my major would be. That simple. Well, I thought it would be that easy.
I am now in my fourth semester of college and the road to get here hasn't been easy. I was still so unsure of what I wanted to study that I tried anything and everything my second and third semester. I have changed my major eight times, and I have been everything from Merchandising and Interior Design, to Psychology and Communication Studies, but the only thing that I kept in my mind during those first three semesters was that first meeting with my adviser. I decided in this fourth semester to go back to where I had started. I signed up for two history classes and one art history class with my favorite professors that I had had before, and remembered why I took those classes in the first place.
I decided for once I was going to change my major yet again, and this time stick with it. I am now a History and Art History double major, and this is hands down the happiest I've been during college. Though I have not been a liberal arts major my whole college experience, it is truly where I belong. And it is a testament to the idea that not everyone needs to be a science or business major in order to be successful. Don't get me wrong, I love my friends that are science or business majors, but fundamentally, I am just not that person. I, like many people in the world, feel successful even when they aren't making buckets full of cash, because I am doing what I love, and at the end of the day, that's all that matters to me.
