"Most people change their majors in college."
This is something I had heard over and over again before coming into college and as well as all throughout my first semester especially.
I came into college with a very closed mindset, constantly telling myself that my entering major would stay my major all 4 years and that when I graduated, I'd become a choir teacher.
About a year after starting college, I can tell you that that is no longer the case for me.
When I used to think of new beginnings, I just thought of the future and what it held for me. And while a new beginning signifies an exciting and different future ahead, it also signifies the end of something else. And most likely, that end is the end of an era.
By October of 2016, about 6 weeks into my school year, I had friends who had begun debating changing their majors. "I'll never change my major," I thought last October as I had barely been a freshman for a month and I had friends considering changing, "Music Ed is IT. There's nothing else I'd want to be doing. There isn't anything else for me..." Yet, despite my mind was saying this, my heart was saying something else.
I got very involved in Dance Marathon on campus, and it was actually one event that told me it was time to consider my future career. Just one event. It was a barbecue tailgate before one of our home football games of the season. I had just found out that I was given a chair position for the 2017 committees, and was very excited. Dance Marathon was something I had always known I wanted to do, from the time I was in high school. Little freshman me walked up to Grange Grove, trying my hardest to find familiar faces that I knew were associated with Dance Marathon. After a few minutes, I found the DM team and I went over and sat down with a group of girls, not having any idea who any of them were.
Within an hour of me getting to the tailgate, I had made a new best friend. He was one of our miracle kids, and we were having so much fun running around and exploring what they tailgate had for kids before the game. After this event, Child Life was back on my radar and I felt my love for kids pulling me back that route.
By the end of my first semester, I wanted out of Music. Or, at the very least, I wanted to pick up a double major. I then started looking into Doubling in Music & HDFS (Human Development & Family Studies) and possibly going into Music Therapy. But, that required 3 extra years in order to finish my undergraduate after graduating the University of Illinois, and that's not something that will be financially viable for me right away. After spending a whole year heavily involved in Dance Marathon & my sorority's philanthropy (Children's Miracle Network Hospitals) I made a decision based on a gut feeling, and here I am a few months later about to officially change my major for my sophomore year and start a different journey.
Honestly, nobody has any clue what they're doing in college. Even a lot of my professors have admitted that to me. And I can tell you that most freshman probably chose a major based off what their parents said they should apply for, and what they "could get a job in upon graduation." And of course, job placement is incredibly important, but it's not everything. If you love something enough, and you're passionate enough about it, you will find your way in this world having graduated college with that as your major. Life really never goes as planned, and life is also very unpredictable. But, ultimately, life is what you make of it.
My ultimate goal in life is to be happy. Every day is a gift and should be treated as such. But, for most of my freshman year, I felt very torn. Torn between doing what my gut/heart told me was what I should be doing, and between what my head was saying I should be doing.
For anyone out there reading my story of changing my major, I have some advice for you. Follow your heart. Or your gut, if your heart does too much talking. For some people, a job is a job. For others, they go into work every day and it doesn't feel like a job because they genuinely love what they do. Most people in college change their major at least once, if not a few times. And, it's really easy to transfer, depending on the pre requirements for different colleges.
Please, please just act on it and go for it. You will always wonder what could've happened, and instead, you could be stuck with what did happen.
Act on that gut feeling and go for it. It's your life.
