Not sure if I want my major but I'm a junior

Student Lounge College Life
1

I’m a computer science student but in the past year or so I’ve been falling out of love with CS. At first I loved doing cs but as it got more and more theoretical I got less and less interested. I also feel like a failure because I’m not doing well in one of my classes and I haven’t been able to secure an internship yet. However, I think a large part of why I am so disinterested is because of personal matters that happened to me given that everyone involved in the following situation was CS.

In March of this year I was sexually assaulted by a member of a club I co-lead. My boyfriend at the time didn’t believe me and broke up with me, which made me think that I had ‘actually wanted’ what happened to happen. I tried confronting the perpetrator but he was able to manipulate and gaslight me into thinking that I was the only one in the wrong (but of course HE could make everything better. Sigh.) Over the end of the semester and into Summer the situation got worse and there were times where he would show up at my apartment with some excuse of wanting to give something back and then we could “talk” (read: he could manipulate me into apologizing for not giving him what he wanted). At the beginning of this semester I was very intimidated by him and ended up talking to the other leaders in my club about it. He wasn’t kicked out but he was told not to come back after me, him, and two other officers sat down together.

I thought everything was good but then I set up a study group for a particularly hard class and he was so offended that I didn’t invite him that he started pestering the other leaders of our club. I just decided to kick him out of the club right then and there but the other officers were very, very unhappy that I didn’t communicate with them first. This lead to a huge fight and half of the board quitting because I dared to kick him out of the club. I ended up telling many people in the club what I thought the real reason that they were leaving was, which caused more tensions and caused them to get even angrier.

Eventually one of our friends got us all together and we were able to talk and repair our relationships with each other a little bit but I still feel so discouraged with everything. I don’t feel like I’m very good at CS and I don’t feel like I have friends anymore since I was so emotional about the whole situation. I don’t necessarily want to switch majors, but I’ve been doing more stuff with User Experience which is geared towards business people. I also don’t feel like I have a niche. I was going to look into doing research but I realized that it’s not what I thought it was going to be and I recently got laid off due to academic politics. I don’t know if I should switch majors or try to keep perusing CS and find a job doing something that isn’t awful later. It might be sunk-cost fallacy to keep going, but my family is already starving to put me through school in 4 years. I really can’t take any longer than I must.

2

Does your school have Data Science? Or CS+x?

Are you talking to someone in the counselling center?

3

We don’t have anything like CS+X or a data science diploma. The most transferable major might be Computer Engineering and that would involve switching colleges (which might actually be impossible).

Advising is also very limited since CS is the largest single major at my college and there are only 3 advisers, so I haven’t been able to schedule an appointment.

4

If there is another major you are interested in, try seeing one of those advisers/professors to see if you could still finish school in 2 years. I have a friend who is a political science prof and she often has juniors transfer into her school without something required that has a 3-4 semester sequence. She advises them to change to a history degree or public policy or something. She’s very good at seeing what major can be finished on time by looking at what courses they’e taken and what is available at the time.

5

At a place like UC-Berkeley, people who don’t make the cut for CS often go into Cognitive Science, Philosophy, Statistics, and ever increasingly Data Science. Other allied fields might be Math, Applied Math, Economics, and Computational Biology.

6

As a junior, have you completed any core requirements and can you fulfill another major in the next 3 semesters?

I changed majors in pring of junior year, it worked, graduated on time. But you need to calculate the possibilities.

Did you report the offense and look for support from those charged with managing abuse accusations? And yes, when MYOS referred to counselling, it doesn;t mean just academic. You would benefit from someone to help you sort through the emotional aspects. Best wishes.