I entered UT Dallas as a neuroscience and literary studies double major, in an attempt to appease my parents and still study what I loved. However, I quickly realized that doing a neuroscience and literary studies double major was near impossible, so I dropped the literary studies major entirely and decided to stick with neuroscience.
UTD is a majority STEM major school, so I was surrounded by many people who loved the STEM major they studied. I began to realize that I really didn’t love neuroscience all that much but I felt pressured to love it due to the fact that most of these other students did. People kept telling me how lucky I was to be at such a great school for those pursuing STEM fields. Day after day, I kept trying harder and harder to love something that I just didn’t and day after day I felt more and more miserable and, eventually, hopeless.
My grades were mediocre, and my interest was minimal. I had never felt so defeated in my life.
After speaking with my roommate (who happens to be one of my closest friends), I decided that I needed to change majors. College should be about pursuing and learning about a subject that interests you, and neuroscience simply wasn’t the major for me.
Of course, the first major I looked into was Literary Studies. While I love reading and analyzing literature, I understood that I didn’t want a career in Literary Studies. I wanted to choose a major that would be more marketable, or at least more practical considering my career goals.
I knew from the beginning of my college career that I wanted to be a lawyer, so I looked at majors in the Economic, Political, and Policy Sciences (EPPS) school that would supplement my love of and help me better understand the law. After looking through the courses required for the different majors offered under the EPPS umbrella, I ended up settling on an International Political Economy major.
This is my first semester as an IPE major, and I am enjoying college so much more because of it. I love going to class and my I feel so much more confident in myself and much more proud of who I am and what I can accomplish. Albeit, there aren’t as many people majoring in IPE as in STEM majors, but it doesn’t matter. UTD has great professors in EPPS, and I’m learning a lot from them.
As kids, we’ve always been told we can follow our dreams and that we can be whoever we want to be. As I’ve grown up, I kind of abandoned this notion when I shouldn’t have. You can do the things you love and still have a successful career. It is realistic and it is more than possible. If you’re stuck in a STEM major because you feel like you won’t make money otherwise, I urge you to look into the field of your choice more carefully. You can and will be successful doing what you love, perhaps even more so than if you got a degree in something you hate.
