Interested in many things but not enough in one thing to major in. Who else can relate?

College Majors
1

I’m currently a high school senior who has applied to 6 colleges as undecided. I’ve been accepted to 5, but I have yet to hear from my top (UConn!). I know that for Uconn, I’d be in the ACES program.

Here’s my dilemma though: I know people say I don’t have to have my life figured out now, but I’m quite worried I won’t ever figure this out. Throughout high school I’ve gone from “Yeah, I’m going to major in premed/psych/international relations.” But I never stuck with any of them.

Truth is, I have too many interests! I love art, but I don’t like the idea of dedicating my life to it. I found AP Psychology very interesting but I don’t want to go into counseling (I’m quite shy) and I’m just not sure if I really want to pursue it. I love technology and I always find myself reading up on the latest phones and computers, but I don’t know if I’m good enough at math and thinking logically to do anything in the computer science. I was a year ahead in math, but after being miserable in Pre-Calc last year, I’m not even taking a math this year and I absolutely flounder in physics (maybe not flounder, but it’s definitely not enjoyable). That completely throws out engineering for me too. I took a B.A.S.I.C programming class last year, didn’t like it, but then the semester after that, I loved the HTML web design course. I went through a phase about international relations since I love learning about other cultures and their interactions, and I’m bilingual along with a good foundation in Spanish and I’m learning Korean.

I’ll have to admit, it’s a little frustrating to see my friends so passionate about their field, whether it’s environmental science or engineering, history, or English. I’m happy they’ve found their calling, but why can’t I find mine?

I also have a fear of going in undecided in a school of liberal arts, and then have to switch to say, a school of engineering and be terribly behind in the course work (but that probably won’t happen knowing my math/physics skills).

I also know one shouldn’t base their major based on the money, but I am looking at the job market since this is my future we’re talking about. Sometimes, I wish I was adept at math/logic so that I could dive into the engineering world, no problem.

So, does/has anyone else feel/felt like this? Any advice from college students who have been in this situation? I figured other people are probably on the same boat as me, so this advice is for them too!

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I think there’s a common misconception that you have to be super passionate about something to major in it or pursue a career in it. You don’t, and I would wager that the vast majority of people don’t feel real passion about their majors, jobs, or careers. They like them well enough to do them for years on end, and they enjoy the work. But feeling a lot of intensity about the career isn’t necessary.

[“Do what you love” is not great advice]("do what you love" is not great advice — Ask a Manager)
[Why you shouldn’t follow your passion](why you shouldn’t follow your passion — Ask a Manager)
[I</a> feel “Meh” about working; am I supposed to be more passionate?](I feel “meh” about working — am I supposed to be more passionate? — Ask a Manager)

The comments on these articles are actually where the gold is: Lots of working professionals who tell it like it is.

You need to find a major - and a career - that you like, and are content with, and that will bring you the kind of lifestyle that you want post-college. Most people have lots of interests; you just have to pick one that you want to follow through into a major and maybe a career. Some of the majors you’ll have access to won’t be things that you are currently familiar with - like geography, cognitive science, communication, environmental studies, human development and family studies, speech, language and hearing studies or urban and community studies. A lot of the careers may be things you’ve never thought of - speech-language pathology? Urban planning? And some of the topics might be things you thought you didn’t like - you like disliked math because you’d never really had it taught in a concrete, applied way before…but you take an applied math class, get hooked, and major in applied math sciences.

But don’t be afraid. It’s the rare undergrad who never picks a major - I don’t know anyone who didn’t graduate because they couldn’t pick something.

3

@juillet Right you are, but there is also the possibility of going into a heavily inderdisciplinary majpr. That’s what I love about urban planning. You have to know your geography, but you also study aspects of history, sociology, geology, anthropology, law, climatology, marketing, political science, engineering, statistics, architecture, and some stuff I’m not thinking about right now. And urban planning can’t be the only such field. It could be that something simillar would work out well for the OP.

4

Some colleges require you to go in as a major, so that could be a problem. Otherwise, embrace the chance to try new thing! In high school, I had too many interests and figured I’d major in writing, or lit, or English, or international studies, or…or…or…etc. You get the idea. A list of a bunch of humanities-related interests and no real clue what to do.
Not on my list? Anything STEM related. Three years later, I’m now a physics major who regrets not taking a CS class sooner since that might have been an even better fit for me. So a complete turn around as I matured in college, learned about impostor syndrome and realized how it had affected me, and really found my true interests. So if you don’t have it all figured out yet, that’s perfectly okay and really to be expected.

Colleges also have a lot of resources for finding your interests. Go to office hours! I learned a lot not just about physics/math but about myself by going to my physics and math professors’ office hours. If there’s a career resource center, get in touch with one of their consultants to see what a good path may be for you. If you are assigned an academic adviser, use them! RAs, mentors, and other students who are meant to be resources can also try to help! Not to mention, most people who have found their passion love to talk about it on and on, so I bet you’ll find plenty of upperclasspeople willing to speak with you.

5

While I am not familiar enough with a field like urban planning to make any judgments one way or the other, one thing to keep in mind (if you plan on entering industry/the job market after college) is that, broadly speaking, employers do not tend to seek people who know a little bit about many things. Rather, they tend to seek people who have specialized in one thing or concentrated in one area. That’s why I would think long and hard before doing anything “interdisciplinary.”

6

As @juillet said, there are so many subject areas that you aren’t familiar with yet- and some things that are really different in college than high school. Once you pick a college work hard on your first year course selection. Be adventurous in the classes you pick to fulfill your Gen Ed requirements- try things that sound interesting to you and see where they take you.

Now and throughout college don’t forget to factor in the teacher: sometimes people think that they don’t like (or aren’t good at) a subject, and discover later that it was the teacher, not the subject that was the problem. That can be true even with really good teachers: they aren’t necessarily the best teacher for any given student, never mind the not so good teachers!

Also, don’t give up on your math ability yet- I know a couple of math teachers who wish that pre-calc would go away (and the skills learned integrated into other classes), b/c it puts so many students off math who are actually well able for it :slight_smile:

Interdisciplinary can be just the ticket for a person with broad interests. The key (as @AuraObscura points out) is to make sure that it comes together in a coherent whole. Urban Studies is great- you can pull in psychology, sociology, history, architecture, (light) engineering, in addition to the actual urban studies classes. Cognitive Science is another, drawing on philosophy, computer science, psychology, neuroscience, anthropology, linguistics, biology, and math. In both cases, as you get into the upper levels you can put the focus on the aspects that are most interesting to you.

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@AuraObscura That’s a good reason to be careful, yes, but there are jobs where you need to study a lot of different things. Doing traffic planning requires equal parts engineering, sociology, statistics, and geography, and often enough economics and geology, and any urban planner needs a decent grasp of political science, because urban planning is a political process. I can’t speak for any other interdisciplinary program, I just know that being an expert in urban planning means knowing where several different subjects influence the design of a city and the ability to push through plans. There’s probably something else out there where bredth of knowledge is just as vital.

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This is so true. Pre-calculus made me dislike math a lot; calculus made me actually like it again. Pre-calculus/analysis is like a special kind of math. (I will say that it did come back to haunt me a bit in statistics, particularly when we started talking about different types of functions. But at least then I had a point of reference as to why that was important and why functions might look that way.)