When leaving high school, you are encouraged to dream big about what you can do with your life. You can be a scientist, a business owner, a writer; I mean you can change the world with what you do after high school. Counselors encourage to pick a school you see yourself succeeding at and being able to find a major in which you are able to make the changes you wish to see. You then apply to schools in places you can make a change and become who you want to be. You start to find the exact major that is something you are passionate about with mixing what you are trying to do. I mean the sky is the limit so why not choose Philosophy, Sociology, or English. You get excited because all of your classes you are accumulating interest you! You are learning and expanding your mind in an area of study that you want to apply to your career after school.
Now imagine you are in your last year, and you have committed your college years to this great major and great knowledge you have now invested into. You are getting so close to the finish line with your accomplishment and your horizon before you, then all of a sudden someone asks you, “What are you going to do what THAT degree?”
You here the traumatic stories every college senior jokes about when parents, family members, and even friends ask you what you are doing after college. Most of the time we stand there in awe of people still asking this question even though everyone knows it’s awful to ask anyone. You sit there spilling your plan and your dreams in hopes it is good enough for the person standing opposite of you. Most of the time you never actually get the response you want. There are always looks of confusion or even an assumption or guess of what you are going to do. Unfortunately, those guesses are never really want you planned but maybe an option.
“Are you going to teach?”
“Does that mean you need more schooling?”
“Are you going to just do a bunch of research?”
The hardest part of opening up about your non-practical major is that not everyone is going to accept you are not going by the sad drive of life. Most people’s drive for choosing their major is what will make them money or even what is practical to their lives. The idea that someone is going to choose their major based on love and knowledge. So the question is how do you respond to such the vile question? YOU DO YOU! Who cares what you majored in? I mean you of course, and that is all that matters. You chose your major based on what YOU loved and what YOU want to do with your life. Why spend your entire life doing a job you really aren’t passionate about or even worse, on top of that job, you are reminiscing about what you could have done as a major instead of what you have to do. Embrace your major in its fullness and whatever you have decided after that, do it. From an English Major who wants to write and do whatever she wants to another non-practical major holder –Good Luck and Press On.
