Let me start this article off by saying I’ve switched majors quite a few times, somewhere between three and four to be exact. At my college, you don’t have to officially declare until the end of your sophomore year, so luckily I only ended up officially declaring (and then subsequently un-declaring) one of those, to ensure that I wouldn’t be a complete nuisance to whoever was in charge of approving those.

Some people switch as many times as I have, maybe even more, which is totally fine. Some people come to college knowing exactly what they’re majoring in, what they want to do with it and where they want to go to graduate school, which is fine too. However, students that are in one of these categories often catch a lot more flack than students in the other; can you guess which one?

With each time I switched my major, I received more and more criticism from people around me. For whatever reason, everyone seems to treat majors as something they can be super nosy and critical about as if they aren’t an important, personal decision that helps you determine which direction you might take your career in.

If I had a dollar for every time I heard someone getting negative feedback on their choice of major that they didn’t ask for, I wouldn’t have any student loans. After being told that my first major would be “too hard” and that my second major “wouldn’t generate any money,” I began to dread the “What’s your major?” question every time school got brought up in a conversation.

The more classes I’ve taken and the more thinking I’ve done, I do think I’ve finally found a major I can be confident in and stick with for the rest of my college days. However, if you were to ask me, I would still answer “undecided”.

I’ve realized that even though my previous majors may not have been the right path for me, all of the unwanted feedback I received on them was a big part of what pushed me to switch. Having finally decided on a major that I’m excited about and want to pursue, I don’t want to hear the same negative opinions that caused me to doubt my previous choices.

Keeping my major private has given me time to think about it, to get excited about pursuing it and to plan my classes in a way that is best for me with no outside influence or advice.

My best advice to anyone struggling with deciding on their major is to take some time to yourself to think about it without telling anyone your thoughts. Pay attention to the pull or inclination you feel towards one major over another, and once you feel that you’ve made a decision, try keeping it private for a few weeks.

What you’ll figure out during the time between making your decision and making it public is that you’re either truly excited about your major and passionate about it, or you’re not. I found doing this without any outside comments or influence made me a lot more confident in my decision, and when I was flip-flopping around between majors, confidence in my decisions was the biggest thing I lacked.

Without the privacy that keeping my major a secret brought me, I don’t know if I would’ve ever decided on a major, much less the major that was right for me. Maybe it’s time to change the way we talk about majors; there’s no way to know how your “How are you going to get a job with

that major?” comment is going to affect someone’s feelings towards their own major.