College is no joke. It costs money to go to college and every second you spend in college must be spent wisely. College is probably one of the biggest time management and decision-making challenges that you’ll face in your life. It’s that important. You’re always deciding. You’re deciding how to spend your time, which friends to go with, which organizations to join, which classes to take, and so on and so forth.
One of the biggest decisions that would impact your life is choosing a major in college. Choosing a major is almost as important as choosing your career. It is a very important decision because your whole mix of classes and the groups of people that you will be mixing with will be greatly impacted by what major you choose.
Consider these things when trying to decide on a major.
In this post:
What are you interested in?
This is the key consideration – more than what career you are interested in or what career or options are available. Why? Because it’s not all about the money. It’s all about happiness. What will make you happy and complete as a human being? What will make you feel that you did not just waste your life pursuing things that ended up not meaning much to you? The key here is to find your personal passion. What is the mission objective of your life? What were you put here on earth for? The answer might not necessarily lead to a major but it’s always important to pay careful attention as to what your passion is and then trace back from that to see what majors would lead to achieving that primary objective.
What are your skills, talents, and abilities?
If you are already interested in certain things, and you have certain talents and abilities, this may mean that you have already identified your passion that’s why you are able to do and polish a certain set of skills and talents. This is really just a roundabout way of asking, “What are you passionate about?” So if you can’t answer the first question, maybe you can answer the second question. In doing so, it will lead you back to the first question. Focus on answering this very honestly and then walking back to the first question.
What are the things you want to do?
Most people are clear as to what they want to do. So this is a good question to answer if you don’t know what you’re interested in and you don’t really have any skills or talent. The warning with these tips is that the things that you want to do may not be the things that are right for you. Many people want certain things and then end up not really liking them, or regretting them. So just because you want something doesn’t necessarily mean that it’s right for you. Keep that in mind. The key here to avoid many mistakes especially when you’re planning out your majors is to list all the things that you want to do and then rank them. Afterward, try to tie them to your actual ability, skill, and talents and also your passion and your personality.
Career Options
This is where the tire meets the road. People go to school primarily so they can get a job afterward. It’s not always the case but the vast majority of students go to school basically for occupational training – to get qualified and get a job. However, in this fast-moving economy and this fast-changing world of technology we live in, just going into college so you can get a job immediately afterward is not as simple as it used to be. Industries disappear overnight so it’s very important to pick a major that will not just prepare you for a job per se but will hone your skill sets that are needed in a particular career or industry that you are looking to enter after you graduate. This is very different from looking at your school as your occupational training school. For example, art history might seem to many people like a worthless major, but art history actually teaches you how to be a critical thinker. It teaches you how to think for yourself, how to detect patterns, how to express yourself convincingly, how to analyze things, how to look for functions, how to appreciate designs and a whole host of other mental skills. These mental skills are needed in a wide range of jobs – law, insurance, accounting, business, you name it. So just because a major is focused on one particular academic topic does not necessarily mean that it’s worthless or it has no practical application. If we are going to look at college majors in such short-sighted terms then the only majors that are left to offer students looking for careers are just a handful of majors. Things don’t work out that way. And given the way the global economy is changing, it’s much better to focus on the analytical skills, the thinking skills being taught by certain majors, than focusing on the topic of the majors themselves.
The Bottom Line
The key to knowing what major to choose is to focus on your happiness first. Focus on your passion because that will sustain you for the rest of your life. Once you select a major, compare them to the skill sets those majors will teach you in relation to the general industry or the general type of work you want to get into. They don’t have to be a one-to-one fit but there should be enough mental skills taught by that major for you to succeed in your eventual field.
