Hi everyone, I’m currently a 2nd year student, going to be 3rd year after this summer and I’ve taken 2 years of business related classes because I’m currently a business major, namely Marketing. But recently, I’ve been considering changing into a Computer Science major. I’ve drawn out my class plans for both majors and the Computer Science major would take me 1 year longer to complete than my marketing major.
If im being totally honest, i have 0 idea what I want to do career-wise. I love film and media so thats why I strayed toward the Marketing career path thinking I could work for the film industry just to be close to film and stuff but ive been scared that its not a stable career and im not sure exactly where to begin and where id end up later down the line. So ive been looking at computer science as a safe bet because the career path seems safe and stable.
Im in a huge hole and I feel like im thinking everything over too much. I feel interested in both majors but also disinterested out of stress. I dont really know what to do. Any advice is appreciated, thanks!
Hello!
If film and media is what you’d like to do, then maybe consider double majoring? Do you think it’s too late and/or too much work to take that path?
My cousin is a computer science major and I know for a fact that his classes are difficult, but it is seen as a stable major. From what I’ve gathered from him explaining computer science to me, the classes in it are not creative, but it can lead to some careers down the road that can be.
Marketing and business are stable majors as well, but both will probably not lead you to a media and film job.
Have you considered double majoring in maybe media studies and computer science/marketing?
Marketing and computer science are both well respected degrees, and in the competitive media world, both could give you an advantage over others applying for the same job. Businesses will always exist, and computer science is important in this world of quickly developing technology.
Like I said, you may want to consider double majoring in media studies with marketing or computer science.
Good luck.
Please don’t major in computer science just because you think software development is a stable career path. First of all, only a little less than half of computer science majors end up going into “computer work” including software development. (https://www.census.gov/dataviz/visualizations/stem/stem-html/). About half go into some other non-STEM work.
Second of all, software development is a skill like anything else. The people who end up in the stable, high-paying jobs are people who are good at it and generally like it well enough. That’s not to say that you won’t develop a skill at it, but if you’re ambivalent and simply chasing it for the potential job stability, your chances at that might be lower than if you were pursuing for interest.
Don’t let fear drive you into changing to a computer science major. There are lots of things you can do with marketing besides film and media; every company - including big technology companies - needs someone with marketing skills to sell their goods and/or services. And marketing majors’ unemployment rate is about the same as - actually, slightly lower than - computer science majors’ (https://cew.georgetown.edu/wp-content/uploads/HardTimes2015-Report.pdf; scroll down to page 31 for marketing majors and p. 33 for computer science majors).