The headache-inducing question “What’s your major?” is typically accompanied by the equally cringe worthy “So you want to be what?” Here’s the problem: more often than not, I, along with the millions of other college students find ourselves thinking that our majors are what dictate the path we choose after we graduate.
It is all too common that people assume a studio art major will be perpetually unemployed and that a biology major will be a doctor. Because higher education is a business (a sad but very true fact), students are led to believe that the major they’ll declare is the singular determining factor of their future career. I want to challenge that belief.
I’m going to tell you something that may come as a shock: I’m majoring in English and I have no idea if I want to be a teacher. Honestly, I thought I was going to grow up to be my second grade teacher (Hi Mrs. Walsh!). However, as I’ve been getting older, I’ve had these crises where I freak out and think that I’ll have to change my major if I end up wanting to do something else with my life. Writing this out tells me the truth that I was trying to avoid: maybe I don’t want to be a teacher anymore.
The other thing that adults in your life probably ask you is “how can you possibly change your mind so much?”, “didn’t you say you wanted to be [insert whatever crap you told your parents to get them off your back here] last week?”, and, the worst of all, “why can’t you just choose?” Oh, I’m sorry, am I interested in too many things?
The worst thing that students today have to endure is the assumption family and friends make about the major they declared. It happens too often that students, like myself, are constantly questioning their decisions because of outside influence. It’s all too easy to lose sight of what you want- or don’t. I can’t speak for every student out there but, I can confidently say I know I’m not the only one who feels this way.
I don’t want to leave college thinking that the job I get next or whatever I go to grad school for must reflect the major I graduated with. I want to be able to use the skills I’ve learned and perfected to find a career that fits me, not my major. I have already learned so much about the type of person I want to be when I’m older. For me, my English major is the escape I found when I first discovered what reading and writing could do for me. I’m also really intrigued by art.
Not just studio, but forms like photography and performance as well. PSA, I could never perform but I have always wanted to see what goes on backstage at a broadway show. This is why I’ve vowed to never let my major define me.
There is so much more to me than just my major. It’s so important use your college years to uncover more of what you like to do and try new things and discover that part of yourself you never dreamed could have existed. So, I’m an English major. I don’t know what I want to do yet but, I know that whatever it is I end up doing, it’ll be something that I genuinely love, not what is expected of my major.
