Japanese Major?

I’m a senior in high school at the moment, with one month away until I can finally say goodbye to this school whether I want to or not. During the time I was doing my college applications, I had put down Psychology as my intended major, but now I’m having second thoughts.

I decided to opt for Psychology as I’ve had to deal with counseling for most of my high school career, and I felt inspired to be someone like the people who have helped me. Some things are holding me back from that, though. I don’t feel like I can wake up every morning thanking myself for getting into this field. I hold some interest in Psychology, but at the moment, not enough to feel confident saying that I’ll genuinely love doing this for the rest of my life. On top of that, I always hear things about Psychology being a useless major or needing to go onto graduate school, which is not completely out of my options, but I do feel overwhelmed about it.

I know that my real passion lies within learning Japanese. For the past three years, I’ve been seriously trying to learn the language on my own. Since I grew up being constantly exposed to the language, I didn’t have much of the basic grammar left to learn, and so I started cracking down the three alphabets, and now in present day, I know enough to be able to hold a casual conversation with little to no problem with Japanese natives. I’ve made great friends and I’ve read wonderful short novels in Japanese, and I’ve even taken up translation as a side hobby recently this year. I absolutely love immersing myself in the language, getting to know how it works, and learning cultural differences through conversation with people. Aside from it going hand-in-hand with my personal hobbies, I just genuinely love learning the language. The only class I’ve been looking forward to taking in college is Japanese, because it would be my first time being in an actual organized, proper classroom, and I’d have more chances to practice my speaking skills, rather than the basic Psychology class that I’ll be probably taking in my first year.

Since I know that this is potentially something I wouldn’t mind doing everyday as an actual job in my later life, I was just wondering if it’s worth it to major in Japanese. I considered double majoring or keeping Japanese as a minor while I major in something else that still sort of interested me and would still be realistic. I also considered being a translator or a high school teacher but I’m not sure if that would be a stable enough job for me or if I’ll be able to financially support myself. I should also mention that I have a slight interest in Biology (more specifically, Microbiology) and Physiology.

I know it may still be too early to think about my major(s), but I can’t seem to get it out of my mind, and I also feel like I’m in a constant state of panic and anxiety because I don’t know what I’m going to do with my life. I don’t want to blindly take General Education classes in college that may not even count towards my future major, so I want to have some sort of solid idea right now.

It’s too early to be so anxious. Take some college classes in Japanese, psychology, biology and you’ll have a better idea. If Japanese is your passion, I see no reason not to pursue it (hopefully it is a suitable course of study at your school). Add a minor, intern, find some relevant EC’s, network, think about grad studies. You don’t need to limit yourself to jobs that are perfectly aligned with a background in Japanese. Humanitarian/NGO work, law/politics, business, media, etc. You’d be surprised how many careers you could go after if you focus on developing skills and putting yourself out there.

What college will you be attending?

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