With graduation time right around the corner for most of my senior friends, I've been thinking about what happens after college more than ever. Entering the 'real world' is scary, to say the least, especially since most of us have been acclimating to campuses that do not represent how an actual job works. Whatever your next step is, choosing what you want to do for the rest of your life is no easy feat.
When I first entered college, summer of 2016, I was sure I knew what I wanted to be, a general surgeon. I was a hard worker, who had graduated top of my high school class in academics and extracurriculars. If anyone could survive the intense pre-med track of college courses, followed by years and years of medical school and residency it was going to be me. So I signed up for classes and began my journey to become a surgeon, that is until I took my first college biology class and realized that medicine was just not for me.
Fast forward to changing my major from Biology to Nursing and then from Philosophy to History, finally ending up on the major that was just right for me, English. You see, I had always loved writing and reading but I never thought that I could make a career out of it. After being introduced to my university's Odyssey Online community, I realized that I could take the skills I was good at and apply them to whatever career I wanted. I think that a lot of time, college students think that their major defines and limits what they can do in the future. Sure, certain major can help develop skills that will be useful in specific lines of work but it doesn't mean that if you don't major in Public Relations that you couldn't one day, work in that field.
This all being said, my desire to become a doctor has come and gone. Instead, I have found another area of interest - law. I know that some of you who are reading this, might not understand my interest in this field, but just hear me out. I've always wanted to help people, and while I'm not exactly sure what kind of law I'd want to practice, I know that I could use my skills to excel in this field. Majoring in English has allowed me to explore a variety of time periods and social movements while juggling hundreds of pages of reading and developing my critical thinking skills along the way. I've been fortunate to study what I love and find a way to apply it to my future career.
College goes by a lot faster than you think, but don't rush into a major, rather figure out what interests you. Find an area of expertise that can help develop your skills and maybe even steer you into a new career direction. It's doesn't matter if you walk in on the first day of classes, knowing exactly what you want to do with your life, or if you're like me, and it takes you three years and five major changes. You have the rest of your life to figure it out, so stop worrying about the future and instead explore any avenue you can.
