Deciding what you want to do for the rest of your life at 18-years-old is almost impossible, but it's expected of all of us.
Asking us to decide on a major fresh out of high school is so unrealistic, and most students end up changing their minds. Deciding you want to take a different path is more than okay until college tells you its unachievable.
I didn't realize how hard it is to actually graduate in four years until I had to change my major three times. I had a very vague idea about what I wanted to do in high school because I didn't have the time to explore what I was really passionate about. When I did find my passion three majors later, I felt like I was running out of time and that my new major was out of my hands. My advisor told me to stick out my first major during my freshman year. I told her that I felt like I was meant to do something else because I wasn't happy and I was doing horrible in the required classes I was supposed to take.
I wasted my whole freshman year being unhappy with myself because I felt like it was my fault that I didn't like what I was doing and I was bad at it too.
My sophomore year, I finally switched advisors and changed my major to another subject that I vaguely knew about because my advisor would encourage almost every major I suggested. Another semester was wasted overthinking if this is really what I wanted to do with my life.
After feeling defeated for about a year and a half, I decided that I was going to have to do this for myself, not what my advisors were telling me to do.
It took months to understand where I was actually happy. It is difficult to decide what's best for yourself when you're hearing so many discouraging things about what you're actually passionate about. I had to talk to the people who knew me best to guide me through accepting the fact that it was okay to change my mind if I was miserable doing something that my advisors were telling me not to do because most students don't usually change their minds this late into their college years.
It's disheartening to know that so many freshmen will come into college not knowing that it's okay to decide that they don't want to do what they thought they knew in high school. I wish someone would have told me that I can do anything I want when I was a freshman, no matter what was written in my transcript.