Choosing a college major can be a very confusing process. Some people know exactly what they want to do with their life by their freshman year of high school, and others don't even declare their major until their junior year of college. Here are the reasons I chose to double major in psychology and mass communications.
I knew by my junior year of high school that I wanted to pursue a career in psychology. At that time, I was still seeing a psychiatrist for my ADHD. I remember the summer before my junior year, my psychiatrist broke the news to me that he was leaving the mental health facility he worked for, and this meant he would no longer be my doctor. The news crushed me. I have been seeing him every few months since I was 5 years old. I immediately started crying, barely listening to what he was saying to me. I have been seeing him for 12 years of my life, and I never realized how strong of a bond I had with him until I would no longer be seeing him.
I don't really know exactly what made me decide to pursue a career in psychology, but I think it had a lot to do with my realization of the kind of bond you form with your patients. I've always loved to help other people, whether it's picking up something a stranger dropped on the street or being a shoulder for my friends to cry on. I'm a very compassionate person and for some reason people feel very comfortable opening up to me about their lives. I still don't know exactly which area of psychology I want to pursue a career in, but I have a lot of time to figure that out because I am aiming to get my doctoral degree and committing to ten years of college (I know, wish me luck).
I didn't decide to add mass communications as a second major until my second semester of my freshman year of college. I took a journalism class my senior year of high school, which was more like a grammar class because each week my teacher would give us grammar worksheets to do; we didn't actually write all that much, but I still enjoyed the class. This is when I started to realize that journalism was calling me. We had the option to take creative writing at my high school, but I was never a creative writer and I knew I didn't want to write novels, so I decided to take journalism instead.
I took a writing course my spring semester of my freshman year of college. I already knew that I liked to write, but I developed my true passion for writing through this class. I was earning high A's on all of my papers and I kept growing as a writer. Even my peers always asked me to peer edit their papers for them because they thought I was really good at editing. All of my papers for this writing class were informative. I literally worked my ass off for this class because I loved writing. About halfway through the semester, I decided that I wanted to declare a major in journalism, which is a track under our mass communications department.
I know what you're thinking. Why didn't I just add creative writing as my second major? I am not a creative thinker, therefore I am not a creative writer. I am more of an informative writer, and I can use this to communicate important information to people. I actually added journalism for fun, just so I had an excuse to continue to write throughout my lifetime. Whenever I tell somebody that I'm double majoring in psychology and mass communications with a journalism track, they give me a confused look because these aren't two majors that typically go together. The response I usually get is a very uninterested "oh. nice." However, I am not planning on combining my two majors into one career. I am simply earning a degree in two areas I am very passionate about.
