It’s a tale as old as time. Freshman arrives at UF for Preview. Freshman decides on a major that seems about right, appears to align with a future career or looks like it’ll rake in the cash one day. By the following Spring semester, freshman somehow feels even less certain about that choice and questions the factors that went into the decision in the first place.
Undoubtedly, this classic story of college does not apply to everyone. However, more than a few of us experience some degree of apprehension when we eventually settle on a major, whether that happens during Preview or more than halfway through our undergraduate careers.
I know I did. My short story looks like this. Mia arrives at UF for Preview, wanting to one day practice environmental law. Mia has no idea how to do this so she chooses an environmental management major of which, to this day, she does not remember the full name. Mia takes General Chemistry I. Mia realizes this is not how she envisioned her college studies and enters the Spring term with one question: Now what?
If any part of that anecdote resonates with you, I may have some advice for you that helped me along in my journey to find at least one major I care about. I am not, by any means, a career coach or guidance counselor; I’m just one college student urging you to study a subject you can talk giddily about for hours. I hope it helps.
The first thing I did when I hit my mid-freshman-year crisis was go back to basics: What was it I really wanted to do when I first thought about college? I thought back to when I chose that environmental-something-something major; I knew it was inspired by environmental law, but perhaps I’d attempted to study that field through an avenue that wasn’t right for me. (Quick disclaimer: I don’t believe there’s a right or wrong way to go after your dreams. Maybe just a difference in what feels right for you individually.)
Anyway, I traced my steps back to where I’d first felt that spark: when I thought about studying law. I’d been trying to fit my interests into all of these niche categories — I’d even switched my first environmental major to a different environmental major, to no avail — when the answer truly was the simplest. That semester, I made the first permanent change to my major and declared myself a criminology student.
I can’t express the joy I felt when I took my first criminology course, an introduction to law and the legal system, and understood that this was what I had been looking for. Thinking back to the simplest, most foundational things we enjoy, even making lists of what we like to read or talk to our friends about, can ultimately steer us in the right direction.
On a separate note, if you’re at a total loss, sometimes investigating new subject areas through single classes can also reveal your likes and dislikes. The Summer semester after I declared as a criminology major, I decided to take an introductory philosophy course simply because I’d heard philosophy was interesting. I didn’t quite understand what it was, but I had an inkling I might enjoy it. Fast forward more than two years, and I’ve been studying philosophy as a second major ever since.
The moral of the story is this: If it feels like you’re grasping at straws to figure out your passions or questioning your chosen path, your journey needn’t end there. You can still figure out what it is that gets you pumped, the subject that you can read about for hours. College is going to fly by, if it hasn’t felt like that already. Might as well enjoy it while you’re here, right?
Mia Gettenberg is a UF criminology and philosophy senior. Her column appears on Mondays.
