Hello all, I’m a 19 year old second semester sophomore. I am currently a communications major, but see that it is not for me. A combination of things made me realize that I possibly won’t succeed with this major post graduation.
Literally everyone that knows me as a person tells me I should really consider computer science as a major. I am into computers, and think programming is cool, but that’s about it. I have NO knowledge on how to program. When I was a kid, I used to make basic websites, was into editing images and videos, and always knew what was wrong with someone’s device, and was the go-to person to fix it. After our household computer broke and we never replaced it, I went years without a computer in the household and lost a lot of my knowledge and love for computers in those years.
I don’t have many interest that relate to school, but need to decide on change for my major before this semester is over. I have never gotten bad grade in math, but I never enjoyed it. Same goes for science. I feel like because of this I won’t do well in Comp Sci. Any advice?
Not a lot of entering college have a lot of knowledge on their majors. That’s what college is for- gaining knowledge on that subject. If you think you’ll be successful with a comp sci degree then yea go for it but it’s a very rigorous course pretty much no matter where you go.
You probably won’t need to know math equations to program a computer. You’ll probably never need to know physics/chemistry/astronomy or whatever science classes. There’s other computer/tech majors like Information Technology and Computer Information Systems that you can consider.
You’ve probably taken a lot of General ed classes at this point - was there any class or classes that you were really interested in? CS is not for everyone.
Computer science is about the theoretical fundamentals of computing—logic, algorithms, data structures, the design and theory behind programming languages, cryptography, to name a few topics. It’s not about fixing/troubleshooting computers or about programming/writing code, which is just a tool used in CS. Theoretically, you could get a complete education in computer science without ever touching a computer or writing a line of code. (Obviously, in practice, you’ll end up doing plenty of both, but it’s important to realize that that is not what CS is about). In other words, CS is essentially logic and applied math. If you’re good at and interested in logic and applied math, take an introductory CS class and see how you like it.
Otherwise, you could consider looking into other computer-related or tech-related majors, like @rymose said. Fixing/troubleshooting computers would fall into information technology and similar fields. Programming and developing software would fall into software engineering.
You didn’t specify why you want to leave communications. If you’re no longer interested in communications purely because people claim that it is a “useless” degree, know that they’re wrong and a computer science piece of paper provides no more guarantee for a job than a communications piece of paper does (in the end, it’s your skills that get you work). However, if you’ve realized that you’d rather study something else for the next two years rather than communications, then that would be a good reason to switch.
Seems like you need the help of advisor. If communications doesn’t interest you, it doesn’t make sense to switch to CS major without taking a CS class. It seems like there should be an interim step. What happens if you switch and then dislike CS more than communications? Can you add an online CS class now and test the waters? Can you meet with a professor or audit some of the CS classes that are currently in session?
You can try a free programming class on Khan Academy to learn more about programming. Lots of CS degrees do focus on programming skills. What sort of college are you attending ? If it’s a large public school, it’s likely to have a sound CS program. You could also look at computational media if that’s a degree program available.