My major is generic and it makes me depressed

College Majors
1

I’m a sophomore at a good, small LAC. The new semester starts in a couple days. I am on track to be an Economics major, I came into school thinking I’d likely be one. I’m a pretty smart kid but I’m not even that good at Econ (got B+s in the intro classes and a B in the most recent one I took), and I’m about to take the hardest class in the department. Another problem is, so many people at my school are Econ majors. When someone says “I’m an Econ major”, I see many people go “oh, another one of those”.

I’m more than just some generic Econ major. I’m really intellectually curious and have a lot of interests. I recently found I love philosophy so I was gonna double major in the two so I could feel like I was more unique, but it would require a lot of credits. I also didn’t want my math abilities to go to waste, so I’ve decided to probably go along the track of Econ major with Philosophy and Math minors.

I don’t know why I feel so dissatisfied with an Econ major. I can’t solely be a Philosophy major though (I don’t have much interest in going to law school), and while I could switch to a Math major I feel like that would eventually make me go crazy and I’d also be depressed.

I wish I could just start over again. Know what I wanted to do with my life. Tried a Computer Science class and gone with that (people who know how to write code? most valuable in the job market it seems). Or done a Math/Philosophy double major from the start. I’m not that good at Econ and I’m just gonna sit in the shadow of all the people who know what the heck they’re talking about while I’m “just another Econ major” and nothing more. Even Econ professors probably wouldn’t encourage more Econ majors because there’s already so many.

2

I also wanna say that at my specific school, Econ is just a generic major because so many people do it, especially my year. I am NOT ragging on Econ in general because it is a very cool and useful field.

3

Many students change majors before graduation. It is totally normal to question your first choice (Econ). What you thought you wanted in HS may not be true now that you have taken more courses in college, matured more, and are more aware of life issues and topics.

Take a few more exploratory classes and it will help you find areas you really enjoy. That is one of the great things about a LAC, you have many choices.

Good luck/

4

There are plenty of CS majors (immensely popular field right now) and the same goes for math, philosophy, psychology, anything. My school graduates hundreds of engineers a year – 170 in my class/major alone. That doesn’t make the degree any less respectable or interesting.

If you make a switch, make it because you don’t like the material, not because there are other people studying it with you. That’s silly.