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How to choose a major that fits your life
ASHLEE
Major: Chemistry
Hometown: Butte, MT
Year: Senior
As this is my second time in college, I feel that the years I have spent in school have indelibly taught me a few things, one of the most valuable being how to choose a major. While some students know from the time they are a small child that they’re going to own their own business or cure cancer, I was not one of those children. At five I wanted to be a garbage collector; at eight, a flight attendant; and at ten, a professional soccer player. I am now twenty-nine years old, have never worked in these industries, and can safely say I never will.
I began college at eighteen years old and majored in creative writing, thinking of the world I would take by storm with a bestselling novel. This also never happened. I chose to major in creative writing because I liked to write, but I didn’t think about the business of writing, and this is where I went wrong. It turns out that most creative writing majors become teachers, work in a K-12 educational system or pursue a Master’s Degree in creative writing and teach composition courses to college students. While I recognize there are other paths one might take, the point is that I didn’t understand when I began college that every major has a business attached to it, and the business attached to the creative writing major didn’t interest me.
In this, there are three important questions to consider when thinking about choosing a major.
The first question you should ask yourself is: “What is the business I will most likely work in upon choosing this major?”
It goes without saying that some majors have built in career paths, and those majors are usually labeled by the same name as the professionals who represent that field. Engineers practice engineering, business majors practice business, and geology majors are geologists. However, it is more complicated to define career paths for majors such as Gender and Women’s Studies, Environmental Studies, History, and Philosophy. Yes, I understand that you can be a philosopher and a historian, but there are fewer professions in these fields. These majors almost wholly teach you a way of thinking about the world instead of giving you specific instructions on how to perform a task. For instance, I have a friend with a gender and women’s studies degree who works in a non-profit organization that supports victims of sexual assault. I imagine that her degree informs her about the way she goes about her workday, but she doesn’t get paid to write treatises related to gender identity. In contrast, if you major in accounting, you ideally leave college with a job in an accounting firm.
The second question you should consider: “What do I like to spend time thinking about?”
My suggestion is that if you like thinking about sports for ten hours a day, than by all means go into sports journalism, sports marketing, or management. However, if you enjoy good political debates and art perhaps you should choose political science and graphic design so you have the background of the political process, the ability to think cogently on the subject, and create media on the issues at hand, too.
Lastly, you should remember that you’ll be spending more time with your coworkers and in your work environment than you will be with your friends, so you should perhaps ponder the question: “What type of people do I like to be around?” Going to work every day is a lot easier when you like the people you work with and for.
A friend of mine wanted to be a doctor her whole life. She did well in science courses, finished college, and when she began medical school it finally dawned on her that she would be spending the majority of her days with sick people. In fact, she couldn’t stand being around sick people. Now, this may seem intuitive, but it was something she never considered because she thought she was going to be the next House. Another friend of mine is an organic farmer and chose to work in sustainable agriculture because he felt strongly about both changing our food system and working outdoors. He spends a lot of time with a few people on a farm in a remote area and he’s perfectly happy seeing very few people on a regular basis and living in a remote area (whereas I would be miserable).
These thoughts sum up just a few things to consider when choosing a major. On average, only 27% of college graduates end up working in the same field as the major they choose. While this is indicative of much larger forces at work than I am capable discussing within this post, I will say that there are plenty of amazing careers that aren’t labeled by a college major. You may need to do some more researching, but it’s not ridiculous to think that you can love what you after graduating.