Study what you love
The trials of choosing a major
The tests are essentially repeats of the past tests our professor provides, so an actual understanding of the material isn’t necessary: memorizing a few graphs and equations and promptly forgetting them post-exam will get you by. The potential implications of university graduates entering the workforce without having necessarily learned anything other than how to past a test are severe indeed.
But back to my main point. Having discovered my disdain for political science and economics, and not wanting to spend the next four years learning only enough to pass exams, I find myself at a crossroads. I have to pick a major by the end of first year.
My preliminary analysis reveals a fundamental dichotomy between what I am truly passionate about studying and what I think would be good to study for a certain career. While it’s hard to ignore the latter consideration, I think it’s best to follow your passions as much as you can. For one thing, as a recent conversation with the Dean of Trinity College confirmed, your GPA will be happily higher if you are studying something you actually love rather than something you think will land you a job.
Secondly, in all likelihood a Bachelor’s degree won’t land you a job you’re going to be happy with anyway. While I do indeed aspire to work in the international system in some capacity, doing an undergraduate degree in something I’m passionate about, like philosophy and psychology, by no means excludes me from doing graduate work in international relations if that is what I ultimately decide is necessary.
Let your undergrad be a degree to teach you how to think and how to communicate, and let grad school be where you worry about a career. I have friends whose parents have gone on to med school after an undergrad in philosophy. While it might take a bit of catch-up and hard work, switching gears between degrees is by no means impossible.
So ultimately, I think it’s important to realize that the widely-accepted formula of major = career begs some closer examination. First year is meant to be exploratory. You’ll change your mind a dozen times, hopefully because you’ll be discovering what you truly love to learn about and not because of what you think will get you a job.
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“Let your undergrad be a degree to teach you how to think and how to communicate, and let grad school be where you worry about a career. I have friends whose parents have gone on to med school after an undergrad in philosophy.”
Absolutely ridiculous strategy. Less than 75% of undergrads end up in grad school. Most “pre-med” majors do not end up in med school. We do not need more liberal arts graduates that are unemployed and underemployed because they took the bait of “study what you love.”
Sorry, but even if you “study what you love” and you do better than had you studied something you didn’t love — there are too many 3.5 GPA psychology majors that don’t have jobs and all try to go into grad school. At least a 3.0 computer science major still lands a job.
Please someone with training in social work help Kool Kieth.
looks like a psychology major got offended!
Honestly, college is sometimes a better option, because it gives you hands-on, applied knowledge and less debt. University is not necessarily an advantage anymore if most grads can’t find jobs that use the knowledge gained there.
That said, I am still considering going to university for Modern Languages. I am passionate about language, and if all else fails, the extra communication tools may come in handy on a resume for another career in another field of my choice. What keith said makes sense to a certain extent, but I think it’s much worse to study a field because of practicality, especially if you have no talent or ambition for it. While we all need to earn a decent living, our lives need some purpose, and if you can’t get any from your job (which should occupy most of your time for a large period of your life, if you chose well and succeed at it), then aside from making a living, what good is that job?
Obviously one should consider the demand for jobs in whatever subjects one choses to study, but that alone should NOT be the only concern!