<p>Well, I’m passionate about having money and bossing people around, so in a way yes.</p>
<p>Seriously though, my passions are music and politics, but early on I asked myself, “Even if I’m passionate about studying those subjects, would they allow me to live a passionate professional life?”</p>
<p>Music: We live in a generation in which the recording industry is essentially dead and the only musicians making money are TV personalities. I neither want to be a panhandler or involved in the “entertainment industry”, so that was the end of that. That, and if you’re really good, and one of the few real musicians who still make it by actually composing music, then a college degree will be irrelevant (maybe even a distraction?) anyway.</p>
<p>Politics: We live in a generation where political science has very little to do with actual politics and people vote for billion dollar “Hope & Change” TV personalities who are privately sponsored just like any other TV show. Very few people are actually making a living researching speculative political systems. I don’t want to spend the rest of my life grinning and giving the thumbs-up to the illiterate mob telling them how great some guy I’ve never met is/feeling ashamed of myself so that was the end of that.</p>
<p>I realized that I’d rather be dead than watch the things I’m passionate about perverted by industry every day. I realized mixing passion and work isn’t that great of an idea, with a few rare exceptions.</p>
<p>Money management & computer programming for me. They may not be typical passionate subjects but I never have to worry about degrading/ruining my personal passions at work.</p>
<p>I’m majoring in Communications. Some schools I’m applying have “practical” concentrations within the major but others are simply “communication studies.” This is widely considered an easy or joke major meant for frat/sorority girls or athletes who just want to graduate. </p>
<p>However, I am serious about this field and planning on obtaining relevant internships so I can work in the advertising industry after graduation. </p>
<p>I also plan on eventually obtaining an MBA so a liberal arts major undergrad is a viable option. </p>
<p>If you major in something that doesn’t seem practical, just make sure you know what you’re getting into and have a plan, like I do. With enough effort it will work out.</p>
<p>I thought physics was my passion, but I took a class of it for the first time my senior year of HS. I can’t say I really enjoyed it… I never really looked forward to the class. Now, I’m an incoming college freshman majoring in Engineering Physics, and can’t help but feel as though I made a terrible mistake! What’s worse is that there are no GECs first-year, so I cannot even explore what I may like and dislike! I really wanted to minor in Neuroscience, but I couldn’t fit it into my schedule first-year either…</p>
<p>I think it’s highly misleading to imply that choosing a more marketable major is about ‘making money’ or something to that effect. That would be true if each and every graduate ended up in his or her field of study and income were the only differentiating factor. In reality, many college grads wind up ‘underemployed’ in jobs that are not only low-paying but also completely unrelated to their majors because they didn’t develop in-demand skills. Such individuals are hardly pursuing a passion by working as cashiers.
“Exploring” is way overrated; it’s not like you will get a perfect picture of your future from taking one or two lower-division courses in a subject.</p>
<p>I’m a music major- Piano Performance, and I really couldn’t imagine studying anything else in college. I love music so much, wouldn’t know what else I’d be able to do all day at school without being bored or hating it. A bunch of music majors all talk about how pointless gen ed classes are for us and how we don’t really love anything else as far as classes/majors go…so yeah.</p>
<p>I’m sure that not everyone is actually that passionate about their major although being passionate is really important in order for someone to really effective in his/her future profession. If you like what you then there’s no reason for you not to excel in that field. Well, if you practice professionalism and wants to progress you have to love what you are studying and be productive in everything that has to do with it. Also, if if you do not set your concentration in your major how can you become successful in the future. </p>
<p>I looove studying the mind. Nothing else matters as much to me as my need to figure out how it works. For me, it’s a spiritual project of self-understanding. Through it, I shall discover the answers to some of the deepest questions ever posed in our civilization.</p>
<p>Or. I’ll make some of the major strides needed to cure the internal turmoil than so many of the mentally ill undergo.</p>
<p>Or I’ll develop mathematical models and achieve that holy grail of science reliable prediction of phenomena (like John Gottman).</p>
<p>Or I’ll develop commercial applications of cognitive neuroscientific progress that will both make me rich and change the world as we know it.</p>
<p>Or something else!</p>
<p>The possibilities are endless! The terrain is unexplored! Life awaits!</p>
<p>I am a rising senior in high school and I plan to major in music education. I’d say I am fairly passionate about it, but I’m also looking forward to experimenting/learning new things when I move on to college. I’ve been involved in the performing arts since I was two, so music is definitely an important factor in my life. But I’m also not 100% sure as to what I really want out of my life, you know?</p>
<p>I’m a quantitative economics major with minors in statistics and accounting.</p>
<p>I’m passionate about econ and business courses and I’ve taken plenty of both.
accounting itself can be a bit dry and stats courses are boring if theory based but not too bad if based on practice.</p>
<p>I spent many years saying I was going to go to school to be a history teacher. I procrastinated every chance I got and let anything be an excuse. Even though I told myself and others it was something I loved it really wasn’t. I love to read about history but my true passion is performing arts. I am 23 and about to start college for musical theatre. I am going to have to do my first two years at the local CC because I have no prior dance experience and will need time to get ready for my auditions. I can tell you that I’ve never been happier. I’m doing something I love to do. I know that as a musical theatre major I will probably be a “starving artist” for a while, but I’d rather be working a dead end job knowing I’m trying do something that makes me happy instead of working in a field that will make me miserable just so I can make some money.</p>
<p>I am working/aiming to work(just an intern right now) in a field where I make very respectable amounts of money. I’m not miserable at all. </p>
<p>Fallacy of black and white thinking right there. There are many lucrative fields that are enjoyable… and if they aren’t enjoyable, you can CHANGE. You’re not stuck in one career.</p>
<p>This past summer and fall, my son wrote dozens of admissions essays on economics as a major and law school to follow. Newly admitted to his top choice, he was still on this track in May 2012. Now, weeks before school starts, he says film studies and writing are his choices. Only a little bit as far as the east is from the west. Honestly. I had to take a deep breath and say to him what I have said to many others all of my life, “Follow your bliss.” (Thanks to Joseph Campbell on that one.) At his university’s orientation in late July, they said three things as advice to my son, his new Class of 2016, and to us, the parents: “Do what you love, do something you are good at, do something to help the world.” Now is the time of exploration. I concur with my son’s new university’s advice and I am embracing my own.</p>
<p>Hm, I do like my major…but passion is a strong word. I’m majoring in psychology. I honestly feel like I would like cognitive science better, but my parents think psychology is the more the prestigious degree and don’t want me to switch. Unfortunately, I cannot minor or concentrate in cognitive science.</p>
<p>I enjoy biological psychology courses and cognitive psychology courses. I even like statistics (theoretically, anyway, the actual practice of it is tedious)…but I feel like as a psychology major I’m expected to go into clinical work, which I have no interest in, or research, which I don’t want to do for the rest of my life. So while I do like my major, I have no intention of sticking with it for grad school.</p>
<p>A major I would be truly passionate about would be American Sign Language/Deaf studies. However, it is not offered at Cal and I wouldn’t want to interpret/teach for the rest of my life anyway.</p>
<p>I’m not very interested in Psychology, actually. I thought I was when I started college, but the theoretical nature of the subject and the fact that every course seems the same as the next is just annoying and makes the topic bland. I went in wanting to know, “why?” the mind works the way it does, but I feel like my school focuses on the “how.” All Psychology is anyways is a bunch of common sense with complicated names tagged to stuff you already knew. I want to go into counseling however, and I expect studying social work in grad school to be a lot more applicable and interesting.</p>
<p>I’m very passionate about my major which is biology. I discovered my interest in biology when I was small and I found it in fossils. Fossils really interested me and I was amazed by them. That later turned into interests in marine biology, genetics, anatomy, ecology, etc. In fact almost everything in biology interests me and makes me all nerdy inside. I also have an interest in geosciences which is my minor. So in fact you could see that me being a bio major and a geosci minor really has its roots in my fossil interest. I wanted to be a paleontologist for the majority of my young life, but after an epiphany in high school I realized that I love medicine and what it could do for people. Biology for me is a stepping stone for my career but it’s also my passion and I can’t picture myself majoring in anything else. There’s just no discovery or adventure in the other majors that make me want to study them.</p>
<p>One of my professors gave great advice about this issue-he said that there are two types of people in the world of work. The first type are people who are lucky enough to have found a career that is his/her passion or hobby. This person will simply love most aspects of his/her career (not possible to love every aspect of anything). The other type is somewhat less fortunate. This type finds a job to support the passion/hobby. Frankly, if you are passionate about model trains, you’re going to have a difficult time finding a job in that area. That being said, it helps to find something close to your real passion. </p>
<p>I’m lucky. I love biology and finding creative solutions to people’s problems which is what biosystems engineering is. At first, I thought it’d simply be a stepping stone to a medical degree, but the more I studied I found myself drawn to bioengineering. I also had an internship at a local hospital and after that I realized that my real passion was in engineering. </p>
<p>While money is an important consideration, I don’t feel it should be the only one. Nothing is worse than choosing a career that you hate simply because it makes money. If your passion is not remotely lucrative (either in this economy or ever) then realize that you may have to work a job to support it. There’s nothing wrong with this, but I wouldn’t abandon a passion simply because it doesn’t have a huge salary.</p>