I’ve been going through this whole thing of not being sure of what I want to do with my life, when I say that I mean career wise. I’ve been bouncing between majors. My first was liberal arts to get into nursing, then I changed it to photography, to graphic design and illustration. Now back to liberal arts. Now that I’m back to liberal arts I have no idea on what I want to do. I go to a 2 year college, I want to get my bachelors degree, actually want to get all of my degrees the thing is…I don’t know anymore. :x
I know that I want to help people, I want to make a difference, I want to change the world for the better. Just not sure, I thought about a few things, med school and also owning a business but a business in what though is the question? I feel frustrated when I’m with people that know exactly what they want to do career wise and then there’s me who is still trying to figure it out. I’m turning 21 in May and this is just frustrating to deal with.
I know the feeling. I went through the same thing for a while as well. I wanted to be a pediatrician then a musician, then engineer, welder, back to musician, etc… I have finally settled on Applied Sociology. This sounds strange considering it wasn’t one of my original thoughts. I chose this major because I thought it was unique and provided an intellectual selection of careers. Three things that helped me decide against the other major/career paths were 1. Figuring out what I DIDN’T like about those options. Engineering for example, I don’t mind doing math, but I would be miserable if that was a prime focus in my career. 2. Exploring career options. For example, if you have one of your majors that you have “temporarily” chose think to yourself, “What work can I get with this major?” And " Is the work something that satisfys my goals?". 3. How can I incorporate potential majors into more interest/hobbie. This one is confusing but stick with me. I REALLY wanted to be a keyboard player for a long time. Playing in Broadway pits and such. After a while, I started to realize all opportunities I was forgoing by pouring myself into music; This began to eat away at me. Eventually I figured out that I can incorporate music easily into my life with side gigs and such. For example, photography and illustration. I’m not well versed in these fields but they seem like something you could incorporate as a FANTASTIC hobbie and such. I hope this helps, and GOOD LUCK I hope you find a path : )
I suggest continuing with the liberal arts major, with, for the sake of practicality, courses in graphic design and web development (since there are creative opportunities and good job prospects in that) and internships involving interaction with people, if available.
It’s really common to not want to know exactly what you want to do in the future. 21 is still pretty young, and if you are still early in college (which it sounds like) you have some room to explore a little bit. Even once you settle on a major, your whole life isn’t decided - lots of people have pretty flexible careers regardless of their major, and you can change careers or retrain in the future. So don’t despair. You just need to select something that’s going to be a good foundation for future work in your field.
There are probably infinite interpretations of “helping people”, “making a difference” and “changing the world”. I mean, there are some obvious ones - people think of being a doctor or public interest lawyer, a nurse, social worker, some kind of helping profession. But there are those kinds of options in pretty much all careers! You could be an economist who works analyzing economic patterns and trajectories in resource-poor nations, and makes recommendations for improvement. You could be a civil engineer that works improving infrastructure in low-income areas. You could be an accountant or financial planner for nonprofit organizations. You could be a statisician or computer scientist for medical research. You could be a technical writer for nonprofit biotech corporations, or a communications director for a university that services low-income students, or a journalist who brings light to conflicts that most others ignore in far-off places. There are a bazillion ways to help people and make a difference, and there’s a large difference in the scope of changing the world.
So the steps to take are to decide what you are interested in, and major in that. Decide what kinds of things you like to do and would be content doing in a career/profession every day. (This may take some time - I was in my late 20s before I figured it out for sure, and lots of friends in my age group are still figuring it out while they work their first or second or even third job post-college.) you can make a series of moves to get to the place you want to be, but think about the task first - you can always transform that into the higher goal of helping others.