All throughout grade school and high school I noticed that I had a creative brain, I wasn't into math equations or dissecting frogs. I was 18 years old and I was told that I needed to pick what I would do for the rest of my life...does anyone know at 18? I looked at my interests and found myself standing outside the Communications Studies building, Freedom Hall.
After a 45-minute introduction about what a "Coms" major entails I was sold, I wanted to be a communications major.
Like I do with many things I went into my classes with an open mind, I soon began to love learning and fell in love with the decision I made. An hour and fifteen minute class seemed to go by in seconds, I was finally learning things I was interested in.
It didn’t take long to notice how different my major was from the traditional majors that people had chosen. Instead of text book test I was creating video projects, advertising campaigns, broadcasting scripts, and so much more. I didn’t need to spend hours in the library studying old books, I spent hours in the computer lab learning how to work Photoshop.
With these differences I noticed that people didn’t think my major was as serious or that I could be successful in something that was untraditional and “easy”. Well you see you’re completely wrong if you think that. Just because I don’t spend hours in the library doesn’t mean I am doing arts and crafts…
Today society is all about communicating, person to person, over many media sites, through articles and newspapers, etc. It’s all around us and for the first time technology has taken a huge control over communicating. You may think my major isn’t as serious but think when is the last time you’ve gone a day without your phone or Facebook. How do you usually communicate with people? Through a text? How do you find the best products to buy? Commercials? How do you share political views? Websites?
Basically everything we do today has to do with communications. I am learning how to master communication skills and I am studying how to improve it with technology, from the basics all the way up to the advance technology developing today. I am learning the art of influence and change through communicating. This art will provide me with a degree that could have mean receiving a very big paycheck in the future. My major is nothing less that interesting and useful.
A communications major allows the average student to explore many different fields of interest, its flexibility really allows kids who are still kids to explore all kinds of topics from film to music to public relations. I think this really shows how valuable being a coms major is. At 18, it's really difficult to make a commitment with studying just one thing, in coms you are given the freedom to discover what you really want and you’re given many choices to explore.
You can say what you want about the coms majors, you can be bitter that I don’t take a chapter test on a book written 200 years ago, or you could respect it and understand that I made a choice to be happy. Being a communication studies major was the best decision I have made and it has made me happy. In my opinion happiness comes first before any amount of money. I choose a major that makes me happy and that will make me successful, you cannot beat that.
