I have had quite a bumpy junior and sophomore year here and will hold an excess of credits for the surcharge within 32 credits with a not so stellar GPA and I want to one day go to grad school. I’m 25 credits away from completing an English degree, but I’m thinking of instead using that as a primary concentration, with my secondary as philosophy and tertiary as film studies or communications and doubling with ICT (information, communication, and technology). Philosophy and ICT could work. The humanities/ICT combo will leave me here to take another 25-29 classes (that means ill be a 6th year student and idk how I feel about that). Another option is to double in philosophy and English and get a minor in IT and CS, which will be another 17-25 classes. My final option is to settle for one degree of either English (creative writing or EWM), humanities, or philosophy and get the technical skill minors mentioned above to do technical communication as a back up. I want to be able to handle myself with visual design like photoshop, video editing, animations would be awesome to learn one day, web design, some basic programming, and tech knowledge, but I’m more focused on humanity than technology and want to integrate the two. I have a passion for writing, fiction, nonfiction, poetry, research, it doesn’t really matter, it just has to be of interest to me. I like film critiques and would like to do film writing one day. I’m also interested in music production, traveling, some photography and working with non-profit organizations. I’d like to do something where I can help people and contribute to society.
And I may do teaching in another country for a bit as well as counseling possibly
You can honestly teach yourself all of those skills without paying thousands of dollars for a college degree. Video editing is probably the easiest thing to learn from that list (especially basic editing). Programming you can teach yourself: there are thousands of websites devoted to teaching you how to program. Web design is also something you’d be well suited to just learning on your own.
Lifehacker has a good write-up on teaching yourself computer science (for free): http://lifehacker.com/get-a-college-level-computer-science-education-with-the-1573535378
At your point, I think you should choose what you would enjoy doing most. Then, I would try to find a way to connect with people that are in or done with the major you are really curious about.
It’s like saying, you can learn finance all on your own. You can certainly do so, but will writing “self taught” under your experience portion of your resume help you get your foot in the door somewhere? I don’t think so.
Listen to your own instinct.
Getting in the door in the finance world basically requires the degree. It’s not like web design, programming, or video editing where what is most important is your portfolio of work. In those fields a degree is a great addition but it’s not at all a requirement.
For someone that’s looking at having to attend FSU for six years, there is no real benefit of going for an extra year or year and a half to fulfill the requirements- at a cost of about $25-30k, all expenses included, when what they are looking at learning doesn’t really require a degree.
Even if they wanted to just learn basic web design and basic programming, that’s really only 2 or 3 classes within the computer science department- about $1500 instead of $25-30k. Teaching yourself how to edit videos doesn’t require any special software (Windows Movie Maker and iMovie are free). If you want to get really fancy, there’s decent software for about $100, but it’s really not necessary for most people, especially if you’re learning.
However, the best way to learn programming/web design/video editing is to simply do it.
There’s no reason to stick around for a 6th year and pay the bills for FSU. Get the degree, maybe add in a couple of the basic computer science course in what you are interested in (if you can) and get out. There’s no need to go through an extra dozen classes to learn the skills you can teach yourself. Major in EWM if it’s what most closely aligns with your goals, as it seems to be, and pick a minor that you like but that you’re close to finishing. Keep in mind that the minors are not listed anywhere on your FSU diplomas, so doing 3 or 4 doesn’t matter.