How to Find YOUR Major

We all face difficult choices – and the choice of a major is one of the most important as well as one of those that we have to make pretty early in our lives. Though you can always change your major, transfer colleges, or get a second degree, it’s much easier to find yourself as soon as you can. So how can you tell that you are making the right decision? Here are a few things that will help you understand that.

Think of Your Interests

Not everyone is so lucky to understand what they want to do in their lives while still pretty young. For example, some students when asked say that they had this childhood dream and went for it or lived among parents of a particular profession and knew that wanted the same. However, what you can work with are your interests.

Here is what one Reddit user Vermontpride says:

“My interests were a mixture of stem and humanities and I didn’t know what direction to go into in college. About a year in I found neuroscience, which was a nice combo of chemistry, biology, psychology, ethics, and philosophy. Exactly what I was looking for. Sometimes it just takes a little exploring and time.”

So, take your time and write down every interest of yours – anything that you like and enjoy or what you would be interested in learning and putting your effort into. Your major choice might not be that obvious until you structure everything on paper. Once you are done, do your research on various professions – job ads can help you a lot. Search for soft and hard skills that match your list as well as some students’ reviews on various study programs to understand which major suits your interests.

Think of What You Surely DON’T Want

Another effective method after listing your interests is to list all of the things and professional duties that you would actually hate to do. For example, you don’t like to work with clients and customers because it would cause anxiety. Or maybe you hate staying in the office for hours and would like to have more freedom. Great, write it down to narrow down the list of possible jobs.

Not only does specifying your interests work great but specifying your dislikes, in addition, will probably help you a lot in finding the perfect major for you.

Consider Your Emotions

When you are already in college, it’s easy to become overwhelmed and frustrated. But you should still track your feelings and emotions about classes or topics to find what makes you excited. If you attend community college it might be a little easier.

For example, you are very excited about the history classes but your major is not focused on history except for a few classes a week. Try to listen to yourself – maybe this is exactly what makes you passionate. Is this something that makes you feel energized in the morning, looking forward to having another class? Does it make you forget about everything and just do your homework, dig for another fact during your research, and spend hours watching thematic videos on YouTube? If so, then you surely have found your major.

Choice of Major – Major Choice

You have probably read our blog post on what you should do if you discovered that you had picked the wrong major. And when we are thinking about switching majors and all of that we surely hope that it will never happen to us as it’s much better to avoid making a mistake when choosing your future career. You can find yourself wasting your time and you surely don’t want that.

So, when you are about to pick the major and the college that you want to go to after you graduate high school, it’s important to track your emotions, and reactions, and learn how to tell if your intuition tells you the right thing.

You can probably find some people among your friends or family who can tell you their college story – how they understood what their calling was and what made them become who they are now. But not every such story has a happy ending. You might discover sad truths about people and their dreams that still remain dreams. And every person you ask will tell you the same – listen to your heart or at least try various options to find what you love.

Not always it’s possible to understand what your life will be after you pick a certain major. It might be so that you suddenly find that it is nothing like your favorite TV show showed you or it is far less interesting when it is all you do day after day. Many books and shows romanticize or simplify various jobs and careers to make them more amusing to watch. But in reality, it might not be the case for you personally.

 So, first of all, you need to figure out what makes you happy and interested and then just not be afraid to try out various options.