I’m trying to decide on a major but it’s a lot harder than I thought. My hobbies (if this helps) are video games (would honestly love to help make/produce video games in the future), playing/watching sports, surfing (love being in the ocean, or water in general and looking at stuff in the ocean), and building stuff on occasion. My favorite subject in school is history (have taken World History, US History and will be taking Government & Economics my senior year, all of these are required courses). In the military I did want to work within the military intelligence field before I opted out and decided I wanted my college education done first with out problems of deployment, any type of majors that could be similar to that I would be interested in. Finally, I would prefer a career that involves more hand-on if possible, but have wanted to work within the government too. Any help would be appreciated, not asking for y’all to pick my major, just wanting some insight on some majors. Thanks
Oh and eventually I want to go to graduate school to get an MBA
Most people have lots of interests and hobbies; that doesn’t necessarily mean they want to turn them into a career. You love the ocean and playing sports - but that doesn’t necessarily mean you want to be a professional surfer or football player. The question really is - what kinds of skills and interests do you like enough that you want to do them for your job every day? That’s a different question.
I work in video games - I help make/produce video games. I work on a AAA game at a major company. I’m a researcher; I majored in psychology in undergrad. There are TONS of people who work on games - from the programmers who write the code to the designers who put things together to the producers and program managers who keep the game on track, the business people, marketing, community managers, lawyers, accountants, human resources, admin, finance…watch the credits for a game you like one time and see how many people get credit for working on a game in a AAA studio. These games cost millions of dollars and there are tonnnnns of roles. I work with people with odd, unexpected backgrounds - majors in psychology, theater, women’s studies, music, philosophy, religion, English, and linguistics who work in direct video games roles (so design or software development or production).
I will say that the positions that are in highest demand in video game development are probably dev positions. You need to know how to program to do those, but you don’t necessarily need to have majored in computer science. You need to know how to program, and you need to understand computer systems and architecture, but I have seem people do that with a variety of majors.
Military intelligence officers have a wide range of backgrounds and majors.
It appears that you are, at oldest, a rising senior in college. If so, you still have at least 2 years before you need to decide on a major. You can reflect on your interests through your senior year, and then take classes that seem interesting to you in college to figure out what you want.
Skills I honestly have no idea besides being good at soccer, interests I know for sure would be with the help in production of a video game(s) because I just simply love them and have wanted to create them for the longest time. I do wanna learn how to program stuff (I’ve tried a little bit but got really confused) but the only thing is I’m not the best at math and I heard the computer science major is heavy on math. I like the idea of having to study stuff (like getting details and having to figure them all out and put them together to help someone finish stuff, kinda of like a investigator/detective for a police department). And I also enjoy learning about other cultures and learning languages. This is all I could think of as of right now, I’ll probably think of more eventually.
And I really love learning about anything to do with outer space, stare at pictures posted by NASA on instagram for long times each time they post something I think is cool lol
How about this – why don’t you plan on making science documentaries? You can get a bachelor’s in marine science and then a master’s in making documentaries (see program at Montana State University, e.g.), or study filmmaking for your bachelor’s and minor in a science. Then seek work in the area of science documentaries. You could wind up traveling to exotic locations to feature different scientists and field research.
Another option is to simply become a marine scientist. Scientists use computers all the time – I can’t stress this enough – and marine scientists get to spend a lot of time at the beach and on boats. You could use photography and video to feature what you are working on, even if it is just sharing it on social media. Scientists also travel the world, both to conduct their research and to attend conferences and meet other scientists. Languages and culture skills will be extremely useful.
Either way, you would be combining your love of water and using computers, and doing hands-on work and traveling.
@mommyrocks thanks for the ideas, that actually sounds pretty interesting, I’ll look into i
Given your interests, majors in anthropology, international studies, an area studies area (like Middle Eastern studies or something) a language studies area (like Spanish or Japanese), potentially political science, physics and/or astrophysics sound like they match up with your interests. Also atmospheric science/oceanography/earth sciences for the love of the sea/water.