Tag: Love what you study

You Don’t Need to Have it All Figured Out

You Don’t Need to Have it All Figured Out

For every phase of life there seems to be a list of questions people love to ask you. Senior year you mastered the, “Will you graduate in the top of your class?”, “What are your plans for next year?”, “What university will it be?” and so on. Now, you’ve made it to your freshman year and you’re finally comfortable on a college campus so naturally people start bombarding you with a whole new set of questions. “Where are you from?”, “What residence hall do you live in?”, and everyone’s favorite, “What’s your major?“.

My first two years at Loyola my answer for the latter was “Undecided”. I was totally fine with that. For me, I was free to just jump into school, start taking my CORE classes and not worry (yet) about what exactly I’d end up with a major in. That didn’t stop people from asking me if I had thought about this or that, what I’d ruled out, and what I was interested in. But I could field those questions just fine.

I think one of the biggest mistakes college freshman make is choosing a major just for the sake of choosing one. Even though switching majors isn’t a difficult process at Loyola (it really just involves a meeting with your academic adviser and altering your 4-year plan) I think that it’s very easy for students to feel trapped by their major, and then they get scared to leave. I would bet that if I had started my Loyola career as a History major it would’ve have taken me even longer to figure out that Public Relations was the best fit for me.

Loyola has nearly 80 majors to choose from, how could you ever know right from the start that Marketing is your calling? Give yourself some time to feel things out and ask around. Talk to upperclassman that have gone through this before (I would bet a lot of them have changed their majors once or twice), definitely talk with your academic advisers (its their job to know exactly what a major in International Studies entails), and do a little research for yourself to make sure what you find is the best fit for you.

There are definitely a lucky few who know from the get-go exactly what they want to study. When they start taking their classes they fall in love with the material and become passionate for their field. From day one freshman year until graduation day four years later, they may never even think about another major. Those people are lucky. I would love if I had been able to do that, and if you could too. But trust me, that doesn’t happen for everyone and there is absolutely nothing wrong with that.

The most important thing is for you to love what you’re studying.

When people ask you, “What’s your major?”, I hope you’re excited to tell them you major in something that you absolutely love.