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Having a lot of trouble choosing a major...

E

enwar3

Golden Member
I really wish I was one of those people who have known since birth what they want to do. I am having SUCH a hard time choosing my major. I've tried taking lots of different kinds of classes but I guess I'm not really engaging them enough because I haven't really found anything I like more than the others. Except I do know I can't stand EE (not smart enough).

How did you come about your major?



Edit/update: Hmm.. so what if I wanted try for an MBA eventually? I realize that most programs want to see some experience first. But are certain majors more MBA-friendly than others? What if I want to remain in the engineering disciplines for undergrad?
 
reading Grapes of Wrath during senior year of high school made me want to be a writer... I specifically applied to schools that were known for their english departments and entered college as a declared english major. declaring so early was kinda convenient since it allowed me to load up on all of my hard 3/400-level classes early on and then have a super easy senior year filled with 100-level gen-ed classes.
 
Originally posted by: loki8481
reading Grapes of Wrath during senior year of high school made me want to be a writer... I specifically applied to schools that were known for their english departments and entered college as a declared english major. declaring so early was kinda convenient since it allowed me to load up on all of my hard 3/400-level classes early on and then have a super easy senior year filled with 100-level gen-ed classes.
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so hows that workin for ya?
 
I didn't know what I wanted to do from birth and I still don't.... I ended up majoring in what I like , History, and I did very well.

If you don't major in something that can get you a good job immediately getting out of college, have fun being poor like me lol.

Am I Happy? Yes! Am I poor? Yes!
 
Originally posted by: her209
What would you do if you had a million dollars?
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Well.. if I had a billion dollars I would design, develop, and manage a hotel. If I had a million dollars.... I don't know. At least that's what I think I would do. That's kind of a high in the sky fantasy and I don't know if I would truly enjoy it. But it definitely sounds fun.
 
Originally posted by: enwar3
I really wish I was one of those people who have known since birth what they want to do. I am having SUCH a hard time choosing my major. I've tried taking lots of different kinds of classes but I guess I'm not really engaging them enough because I haven't really found anything I like more than the others. Except I do know I can't stand EE (not smart enough).

How did you come about your major?
Click to expand...

Take a professionally administered Aptitute Test. At a minimum it should give you some direction and identify some careers based on your strengths and weaknesses. You can then pick a major based on the results.
 
Originally posted by: Flammable
Originally posted by: loki8481
reading Grapes of Wrath during senior year of high school made me want to be a writer... I specifically applied to schools that were known for their english departments and entered college as a declared english major. declaring so early was kinda convenient since it allowed me to load up on all of my hard 3/400-level classes early on and then have a super easy senior year filled with 100-level gen-ed classes.
Click to expand...

so hows that workin for ya?
Click to expand...

I've got a pretty decent IT job that has absolutely nothing to do with anything I went to school for 😛

I discovered the hard way that I'm a lot better at academic stuff than creative writing, but had no desire to become a professor... thought about going into publishing on the editorial side, but print is a dying media and I didn't have any contacts to get my foot in the door.
 
you should major in awesome.


btw: NO ONE knows want they want to do from birth, and maybe 87% of first year undergrads know what they want to know just as they start school. That's exactly what school is for.
 
I thought i wanted to major in chemistry. The department at my school was full of a-hole professors though.

So now i'm majoring in economics. Cuz it pays better than english and it's easy.

But since economics was too easy I decided to add math. Which is like pounding your head against the wall. So far i've stuck with it though.
 
Originally posted by: fishmonger12
I thought i wanted to major in chemistry. The department at my school was full of a-hole professors though.

So now i'm majoring in economics. Cuz it pays better than english and it's easy.

But since economics was too easy I decided to add math. Which is like pounding your head against the wall. So far i've stuck with it though.
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You should throw in some Stats for the trifecta. :thumbsup:

or switch math to Stats. more applicable to real world work, and pays much, much better.
 
I would say 75% of the people I knew in college changed majors at least once, so your not behind the curve. I would say, unfortunately the first thing you have to do is determine how much money it takes in order for you to be happy, if that is $30,000 then pretty much everything is open, if its $300,000 then I hope you like pre-med or law etc.. After that, it really is just pick what you like doing, if you are taking classes in something that does not interest you it does not matter how smart you are, you will do bad. MY lowest grades in college were in the 100 level A&S classes because I didn't give 2 shits about them. You will never be good at a job you can't stand!!
 
Originally posted by: her209
What would you do if you had a million dollars?
Click to expand...
A million one-dollar hookerbots, or one million-dollar hookerbot?

I would likely find myself in the same position as Peter of Office Space , "I would sit on my ass, and do nothing." 😱



Originally posted by: BrownTown
I would say 75% of the people I knew in college changed majors at least once, so your not behind the curve. I would say, unfortunately the first thing you have to do is determine how much money it takes in order for you to be happy, if that is $30,000 then pretty much everything is open, if its $300,000 then I hope you like pre-med or law etc.. After that, it really is just pick what you like doing, if you are taking classes in something that does not interest you it does not matter how smart you are, you will do bad. MY lowest grades in college were in the 100 level A&S classes because I didn't give 2 shits about them. You will never be good at a job you can't stand!!
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Shens. I've always gotten glowing performance reviews at every job I've had, and I've yet to enjoy one of them.😛

Same with classes, either school or college. I tend to get the same grades in courses I enjoy, loathe, or are indifferent about. In school, it was usually straight-A's. In college, I averaged a 3.45 GPA, regardless of the classes. I guess I found the gen-ed classes easiest, simply because the work involved was so trivially simplistic compared to that of my engineering courses. Sure they were boring, but I could blow through the homework in less than 10% of the time as the classes that really mattered, so in terms of grade points per time invested, they gave an excellent return.


 
I started uni majoring in physics and astronomy because I find astrophysics fascinating. After two years I realised that my job prospects were extremely poor unless I wanted to do another 5 years of post grad, and even then the odds of getting work in a field I reall wanted to be in were poor. I took a programming class in my second year and loved it, so I have switched to computer science, with some mathematics. Still loving it.
 
Originally posted by: GodlessAstronomer
I started uni majoring in physics and astronomy because I find astrophysics fascinating. After two years I realised that my job prospects were extremely poor unless I wanted to do another 5 years of post grad, and even then the odds of getting work in a field I reall wanted to be in were poor. I took a programming class in my second year and loved it, so I have switched to computer science, with some mathematics. Still loving it.
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Nerd! 😛
 
Economics is a good default major. Looks good on any graduate school application and is also useful as a major for entering the workforce.
 
I started majoring in EE, but found the community lacking and a lot of the classes uninteresting.

I switched to Comp Sci and Physics, dual major. Bad choice doing both. Still not much community in either. Physics is pretty tight-nit, but tiny.

Comp Sci has been pretty easy (I'm a senior now), and I liked it from the programming classes I had in high school that were also pretty easy.
Physics 1 and 2 were easy and I enjoyed them in high school. Physics in college is way harder (for the upper level courses), and I think you'd really need to basically get a math major to keep up with all the math (and many people do) or have a ton of time to dedicate to learning it all.
 
Originally posted by: Jeff7
Originally posted by: her209
What would you do if you had a million dollars?
Click to expand...
A million one-dollar hookerbots, or one million-dollar hookerbot?

I would likely find myself in the same position as Peter of Office Space , "I would sit on my ass, and do nothing." 😱



Originally posted by: BrownTown
I would say 75% of the people I knew in college changed majors at least once, so your not behind the curve. I would say, unfortunately the first thing you have to do is determine how much money it takes in order for you to be happy, if that is $30,000 then pretty much everything is open, if its $300,000 then I hope you like pre-med or law etc.. After that, it really is just pick what you like doing, if you are taking classes in something that does not interest you it does not matter how smart you are, you will do bad. MY lowest grades in college were in the 100 level A&S classes because I didn't give 2 shits about them. You will never be good at a job you can't stand!!
Click to expand...
Shens. I've always gotten glowing performance reviews at every job I've had, and I've yet to enjoy one of them.😛

Same with classes, either school or college. I tend to get the same grades in courses I enjoy, loathe, or are indifferent about. In school, it was usually straight-A's. In college, I averaged a 3.45 GPA, regardless of the classes. I guess I found the gen-ed classes easiest, simply because the work involved was so trivially simplistic compared to that of my engineering courses. Sure they were boring, but I could blow through the homework in less than 10% of the time as the classes that really mattered, so in terms of grade points per time invested, they gave an excellent return.
Click to expand...

then you are a FAR more self motivated person than I. I literally failed the into philosophy class that all the football players take (and pass), and had no problem with all the EE classes. If I am not interested in something I won't even remotely try. Of course, if you are interested in MONEY then maybe that can be your motivation 😛. In college my engineering GPA was 3.3 and my overall was 3.0. Which means that A&S class were like 2.4 because I took far less of them then engineering classes because I AP-ed out of most. I failed philosophy 101, got a C in econ 101 etc. The only A&S class I did well in was Organic Chemistry which I took both semesters of because it seemed interesting even though its obviously useless for EE (also all the people in that class were back stabbing assholes who would actively try to sabotage you to make themselves look relatively better for med school which I had not interest in).
 
Right now I'm thinking of having computer engineering as my major but after a while, I realized although making things is fun, I'm the kind of person who wants to help people more mentally/physically (more mentally) than by machines. After seeing those passionate about working with machines/electronics/programs, I realize that my heart lies elsewhere.

So now I'm trying to see if medical is my goal, or if psychology is where I want to be even though my parents are fully against it. I realize that at most I care for the well-being of others than anything else. I rather have the guy next to me feel a lot better about himself than my own well-being. Whether or not that's a good clue for psychology or medical is something I have to figure out.
 
Originally posted by: BrownTown
then you are a FAR more self motivated person than I. I literally failed the into philosophy class that all the football players take (and pass), and had no problem with all the EE classes. If I am not interested in something I won't even remotely try. Of course, if you are interested in MONEY then maybe that can be your motivation 😛. In college my engineering GPA was 3.3 and my overall was 3.0. Which means that A&S class were like 2.4 because I took far less of them then engineering classes because I AP-ed out of most. I failed philosophy 101, got a C in econ 101 etc. The only A&S class I did well in was Organic Chemistry which I took both semesters of because it seemed interesting even though its obviously useless for EE (also all the people in that class were back stabbing assholes who would actively try to sabotage you to make themselves look relatively better for med school which I had not interest in).
Click to expand...
Here we go:
Cumulative GPA: 3.49
Major GPA: 3.43
Couldn't get the scores earlier, my university's registration and transcript server system goes down for 2-3hrs each morning for who knows what. If their backup system is as antiquated as the software those things run, they're probably doing backups to 5.25" floppies.

Gen-eds were usually good GPA boosters for me - an easy A with very little effort.🙂 Engineering courses were more insidious, with long and tedious homework assignments, and tests where I'd always screw up a few little things that would cost lots of points. 3²=6, x²=x, that kind of stupid stuff.
I didn't do any of the AP stuff. Back in high school, I could fix most come computer problems, and at the time, that was a $60-$100/hr job. I never really planned on college, so AP courses just seemed like a lot of extra work for nothing.
Then 2 years at a community college for Cisco Networking; I was an internship away from getting an associate's degree, but companies were busy laying off by the thousands as the NASDAQ was busy digging its own grave. Then I failed my CCNA test by a single question.
Worked almost 3 years in retail then; now I'm one class away from graduating; that "class" is my senior project. I'll be 27 in a few months....I feel like the old man on campus. As a freshman at the university, I was older than most of the seniors.
Soooooooooo sick of college life; it's been far too long.
 
I majored in civil engineering cause they asked us in grade 10 to do a project on a future career. It was pulled out of my ass, but when my friend in grade 12 sais he was going mech. eng., I just applied for that and had civ as my second choice. It all worked out... kinda.

Honestly, if you don't know what you want to do, either pick something where you can easily transfer to something else or take a year off school to find a job. Once you start seriously looking, and get bored out of your mind, you start getting ideas.
 
I majored in Social Sciences and am screwed, but I don't think its so much because of my major but because of a lack of experience. If you can get a high GPA and get involved in school and have some good internships I don't think it matters what your major is because you should land a decent first job and be on your way.

If I had to do it over I'd still stay away from Engineering and the other job-training majors, but might opt for Economics so that even without experience I might qualify for a broader range of jobs than I do now.
 
Spent 2.5 years in Biology, wanted money (premed). Switched to computer science when those "dreams" were crushed. It is going to take me 5 years (going summers) to get my undergrad thanks to my major switch so late in the game. Fortunately, this semester is the last one. I have not enjoyed programming in over a year. I am now just clawing to "help" (since nothing is for certain) secure a position in the middle class. Trying to get a research assistantship for graduate school so I can ride out the economic slowdown for two more years an get a MS in CS. Once I have a graduate degree and I am able to teach (and help pay for my education), I am going to try and get into business administration.
 
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