<p>I am completing my first year at Berkeley.</p>
<p>When I first came I wanted to do Economics for my major, taking the mathematically based track with a view to going to continuing with grad school.</p>
<p>The problem is...I realized my math skills really aren't that good. I am currently getting screwed by Math 53 (and hoping Sethian does like he sometimes does, and makes the Final worth 90% of the grade). On the other hand I got A's without much effort during the first semester in the writing based courses, this semester I'm doing mostly technical courses and on track for C's in most of them. Not only do I not enjoy them, they're butchering my GPA.</p>
<p>But of course to have a future in Econ you need a lot of this higher math. So I'm thinking of exploiting my comparative advantage and taking something else, in the humanities.</p>
<p>What are you experiences in the majors below? Would you recommend them? etc They're ordered by rough order of preference.</p>
<ul>
<li>History: this is what I'm considering most seriously atm. I've always been interested in it, know quite a bit on it and got high grades in it. I have fluent Russian so specializing in the East European / Eurasian area would be a feasible and indeed obvious option.</li>
</ul>
<p>Question: I know you have to decide your major in 2nd semester of sophomore year. At that time, do you need to have completed all the prereqs for the proposed major, or is it OK to be in the process of finishing them up? </p>
<ul>
<li><p>Political Science: Not as interested, though I'm thinking of doing PolSci 4 (International Relations) next semester. I have the impression it is, unsurprisingly, one of the most politicized / ideology-laden humanities - is this accurate?</p></li>
<li><p>Philosophy: I am not enjoying Logic. I'll probably take a few of the interesting-sounding courses like Philosophy of Mind or Modern Philosophy, but I don't see myself doing it as a major.</p></li>
<li><p>Slavic Languages and Literature: danger of narrow focus? (not easy to switch to different area if I end up not liking it)
Question: if you already know Russian well, is it necessary to take their Russian-language prereqs anyway?</p></li>
</ul>
<p>I'm going to follow this up with emails to faculty, advisors, etc, but I would appreciate some general feedback from here first. thx</p>