No real academic interest? Major help?

<p>So here it goes. I go to a US News ranked top 15 school (i know, rankings mean nothing, just some perspective), and I've been struggling. Unlike all my friends and classmates I've talked with, I have no interest in any majors, or with academics at all. I took a smattering of courses over my first year, and found all of them to be dull and uninspiring. I've met with my academic advisor, the career center, and read through all the department websites, and nothing sticks out as something I'd want to pursue. I watched all my friends declare their majors at the end of the second semester, all of them passionate about their topic of interest. I didn't declare, and now I'll be entering my sophomore year with no direction or motivation.</p>

<p>So what do I do? How do I find an interest? Or does college/academic life just not fit with me?</p>

1 Like

<p>I would start with what you want to do for a living (very generally), and work your way backwards.</p>

<p>And don’t worry, 4/5 of the PhD’s I’ve talked to either admit they don’t have a clue about what comes after grad school, or think they have a clue, but don’t.</p>

1 Like

<p>That doesn’t really work for me… An ideal life for me would be one in which I never had to work or have a career at all. I’ve done things like volunteer work and other extracurricular activities, but nothing seems to give me any fulfillment at all.</p>

<p>So you want your benjamins to grow on a tree? you need a reality check</p>

<p>Yeah, a reality check is needed. I’m not all that interested in making money, but I feel like personal satisfaction is something I really need.</p>

<p>And obviously I know I will have to get a job and support myself after college, but I can’t imagine myself doing something that I’m not fully interested in. So the problem there is, I don’t seems to be interested in anything academically, so how can I get a job I’m interested in?</p>

<p>I’m pretty sure I’m overthinking this whole process, but hey, thats me.</p>

<p>If you’re paying OOS or private school tuition (which I’m going to assume you are), you should take a sabbatical or figure out what you’re doing fast. There’s no use in wasting your parents’ money when you don’t have a clue what you want to do. Find a passion and a reason to be there or get out.</p>

<p>You want to make money but not have to work to get it…looks like your best bet is to marry a rich old woman and hope she leaves her inheritance to you. </p>

<p>Side rant: people like you are why I hate college admissions anymore. It’s such a rat race that people get in to top schools just to get in and have no idea what they want to do with their lives. /end rant</p>

<p>What do you like to do? For example, I’ve always liked history and studying why people do the things they do, so for me a history/anthropology degree was a way to go.</p>

<p>That is a good place to start.</p>

1 Like

<p>You said you are entering sophmore year…as long as you declare by end of that you’re usually ok. Some people take longer to find their passions. Should you take a year off? Maybe. First, have you finished all your general ed requirements…those things that like them or not you’ll have to check off the list. If you haven’t then I’d stick through next year and be sure where possible you can try different courses. If you can’t go through next year without committing to a major that will cost you if you change your mind, then maybe some time off would help.</p>

1 Like

<p>Why would you say that you are going to a Top 15 school when your profile contains the school you are attending and what class year your are? Either you made a redundant statement, assumed that CC’ers don’t know that John Hopkins is highly ranked, or you tried to maintain some semblance of anonymity but committed a fail of epic proportion.</p>

<p>^^^
You’re right. Haven’t been on here since my college admissions days and forgot that I had what school I was attending in my profile. So yeah, anonymity fail.</p>

<p>I think some people are misunderstanding me. I’m not someone who’s just totally lazy and never wants to have to work. I just don’t want to do something that I don’t love. And right now I don’t really seem to love anything.</p>

<p>Believe me, I want to have passions and I want to have a job related to those passions, I just don’t know what they are, or how to find them.</p>

1 Like

<p>scmom12, my school has very few distribution requirements, and they depend on you major. Basically if you have an engineering or science major, you have to take a few humanities and social science courses, and vice versa. But no specific gen ed requirements.</p>

1 Like

<p>hmmmm… what if you took a variety of classes that would count as gen eds? It would give you some ideas.</p>

<p>Can you take a year off to work, volunteer, travel, etc? That would allow you to explore some things that interest you. No point in going in to something you don’t have a desire to study/do.</p>

1 Like

<p>I guess thats probably the best option at this point.</p>

1 Like

<p>What kinds of things do you like to do in your free time? Play sports, watch sports, movies, video games, hiking, reading, drinking beer, talking with friends, etc? </p>

<p>Or maybe the question is, of the variety of classes you’ve taken so far, which did you hate the least? (For the content, not the difficulty or the professor.)</p>

1 Like

<p>I pretty much do all of those things in my free time lol. But when it came to classes, I didn’t necessarily hate them, it’s just none of them really inspired me to learn more.</p>

<p>I guess I’ll give a little more background. In high school I was pretty much good at every academic subject with no effort, but nothing was too inspiring there either. I remember being a little more engaged in what I was learning, but mostly I was just trying to get by. I at least had some motivation then, to get into a top school, but I never thought too much about what I would study or what I wanted to do with my life. So yeah, now I’m just entirely unmotivated.</p>

1 Like

<p>Okay, since you said you do a lot of things outside of school, what is your favorite thing to do? You don’t even have to think in regards to academics, but what are things you like to do?</p>

<p>For example, I like motorsports. If I weren’t a biology person, I’d be interested in getting involved in motorsports (think F1, etc.). Thus, think about things that are related to that interest. Teams need PR and marketing, engineers, managers, etc.</p>

<p>It doesn’t matter even if your favorite thing seems as far away from college as possible. If you like food or cooking, look at getting involved with dietetics, food journalism, tv production, etc. </p>

<p>These things may seem like a stretch, but it’s very possible to do</p>

1 Like