Major College Thoughts

As a first-generation college student, choosing my major would prove to be the most daunting task of beginning college, and much harder than just selecting the college that cost the least after the scholarship I qualified for was factored in. This boiled down to more about what I liked and thought could make a successful career for me in the future. After looking internally at myself, I didn’t know what I liked outside of football, and I was most certainly not going to be a professional or even college athlete. Instead, I was going to have to look at what I liked, and also what meant a lot to me. 

Things like: 

• Job security

• The ability to take care of my family

• Do I have to work alone or am I alright in a group setting?

• Do I need recognition from my employer?

• Do I want someday to be able to climb the company ladder or am I alright being on the lower end of the work ladder?

• Do I have the characteristics to do this career or would it be a disservice to those in the field already?

All of these things and more are what you must consider when looking at all of the choices for majors at SAU, and eventually, your career choice.

Choices to be Made

I spent a lot of time introspecting during my senior year of high school, thinking about the criteria I mentioned. I decided what mattered enough to me to make a significant effect on my career and major choice were job security, financial security, and making sure I didn’t go somewhere that my character wouldn’t allow me to succeed. 

One thing I considered was being a football coach and teacher, which would lead me to dive into kinesiology and education. I, however, didn’t think I would have the patience to be a teacher and didn’t have a passion for the teaching side of that. If I had chosen to do that, I would be doing a disservice to other teachers by lowering the standard that teachers should be held to, as well as the image of teachers to students and the outside world.

Another alternative to me was skipping college and choosing to become a welder, but I also knew that I would prefer to not have to work so many hours per week in the future when I had a family; it’s also a very volatile job market, as many welding jobs are constantly experiencing layoffs and cutbacks.

More Questions than Before

After considering the options that I liked on the surface and coming to terms with the goals that I had for my career, I wasn’t anywhere closer to deciding on a major. The reason that I wasn’t any closer was that I wasn’t looking deep enough or doing my due diligence about choosing my major. I was simply looking at the surface of the major and career. 

For instance, I had no idea what an engineer was, but all I would say was, “I don’t think that’s what I wanna do when asked about that.” I was not giving myself the best chance to succeed by relying on my own intuition with no research into the fields. After a serious talk with one of my favorite teachers in high school, I realized what an engineer actually was, and saw that the career fit exactly what I wanted. There’s always a need for engineers and is, at least at the time of my graduating high school, one of the highest average paying careers for only needing a bachelor’s degree.

Decision Time

Overall, selecting my major was much more of an internal look at myself, and it’s a hard thing to do at seventeen or eighteen years old. It’s taking a real look at yourself and being completely honest because you are the only person who can make these kinds of choices for yourself. The good thing about making the choice at seventeen or eighteen years old is that you’re still so young that it can change and not set you back in life. If you get to college and decide that you didn’t know what you wanted or how you wanted your life to go, then it’s the absolute right time to correct that. Take the time and look at yourself again, a little bit harder this time, and decide on what you want. Then do the research to see what kind of career fits those goals and what major that ties to.