As a high schooler, you get asked the same series of questions over and over again by all of your family members and those occasional “friend of moms” you run into at Chilies. Questions like “what college are you going to? What do you want to be? What’s your major? What do you want to do for the rest of your life?” And with each question that gets asked, the farther you go into your orbit of panic. How do I know where I’m going? For all I know I’m still finding myself.
When we go into high school as a freshman, we think we have all the time in the world. 4 more years right? That’s plenty of time to figure everything out. At least that’s what I thought. I thought wrong. Picking one job to do for the rest of your life and take tons of classes based on that career? It’s terrifying, and here I am now, as a freshman in college thinking back to when I had all the time in the world to figure out what I wanted to do as a freshman in high school. I just tell people now that my major is “freedom” because I’m just taking classes for fun and I’m having the time of my life while doing it.
I believe each person who goes to college experiences it in a different way. Some people just want to work hard and graduate early, some people just want to take the classes they need and get out, and some people are there to see what happens. I feel like I fit into that category well. I’m not rushing or stressing over my major because I know it’s there and it knows I’m looking for it while waiting patiently for me to find it. I have time. So to all my friends who are stressing and everyone is telling them that the ‘time is now,’ I’m here to remind you that YOU decide when your time is now. Not anyone else. You determine your own future and destiny and you know yourself better than anyone in the world. So do not be discouraged of having a major in freedom. Enjoy it. Because when you major in freedom you’re not tied down just yet by the commitment of declaring a major. And your time will come, but for now, enjoy it. Focus on your classes and excelling in them and meet new people while you do it.
Being a college freshman has caused me to have many epiphanies about my future (hence all the recent articles about college.) I, by no means, know the first thing about getting through college yet, and I can barely find the bathrooms when I need them, but what I do know is that when people tell you that you HAVE to have a major upon entering college, it’s a load of barnacles. Have fun, don’t remember college as a miserable experience because you didn’t know what to do, remember it as amazing because you went out of your way to try new things and meet new people all while discovering yourself. That makes for a much better story.
