As I sat and ate some over salted stir fry, my younger sister, who recently graduated high school, made a very coy statement. “I don’t even know what you do for work.”
I stared blankly for a few seconds with thoughts bombarding my mind. My neural pathways surely were in a mix; I couldn’t decide if I was surprised that she didn’t know or whether I had an interesting way to explain my current internship. I was currently working an accounting internship that primarily focused on AP (making sure our company was paying other companies).
Not the most riveting job, but a good learning experience and a way to explore different facets of the business world.
I turned to my sister and said, “well, I do accounting,” a topic she was considering to study in college. The conversation went on but ended with, “I don’t know what I want to do for college,” followed by, “I even searched ‘Jobs’ on Google to see if I would like anything that showed up.” That’s when I remembered what it was like for me to decide my major.
After all, my sister isn’t the only person that’s gone through this experience. Some are still going through it, even in college. Some people graduate college and are still going through it. If you are wondering how to decide what to major in college, that’s what will be answered today. It’s never too late to discover what jobs, fields of study, or industries you may be passionate about or thrive in.
A Three Step Plan to Choose a Major in College
Everyone likes a well-structured plan, right? No? Just me?
Well, there are three steps to choosing a major in college and they are all derived from within you (until step three). These three steps are ranked by importance, the first step is by far the most important, but each step has its place in our plan. The three steps are as follows:
- Step 1: Discover your passions
- Step 2: Discover your aptitudes
- Step 3: Discover desired lifestyle and benefits
While these steps seem quite straightforward, it takes a willingness to be open and honest with yourself. Remember, you don’t help yourself by pretending to care more about something than you actually do, simply because you think you should. If you unironically find it funny to see an old lady fall down the stairs while simultaneously having zero empathy for that lady, then the medical field may not be your best path.
With that being said, this plan has been created to help you discover more about yourself, what you are passionate about, what your strengths are, and how you want to live your day-to-day life. And while this plan may help you decide a major, it cannot guarantee that you will enjoy that field of study. This plan is not the end all be all, but more of a brainstorming session to get you focused on fields that naturally pique your interest.
“Enough with the disclaimers, let’s get to step one already.”
Okay, let’s start working through the plan (patience doesn’t seem to be my strong suit).
Step 1: Discover Your Passions
Discovering your passions is the most critical step because regardless of your aptitudes or desired lifestyle, studying a field that you are passionate about gives you a reason to push through the difficulties of the journey. What’s going to keep you studying even during the late nights? Passion is. What’s going to give you energy when you learn? Passion is. What is going to keep you pushing through long work hours 5 years after graduation? Passion is.
What is passion? Let’s start with what passion isn’t. Passion isn’t an interest in sports. Passion isn’t a dabble in art. Passion isn’t surface level. Passion always has a deeper meaning than we are led to believe.
Passion is an intense desire to pursue an objective through various means to acquire a sought-after result. “What does that even mean – sounds like a vocab definition.”
Passion isn’t, I love medicine. Passion is, I love helping people and medicine allows me to do that. I love changing peoples’ lives. I love impacting people positively. Passion is, I love solving problems and being analytical. I love listening to people. I can guarantee you that anyone in the medical field that is truly passionate about what they do knows that the passion is about the people. Not the mechanics.
Notice how above it says that “passion is an intense desire to pursue an objective through various means…” That various part is very important. If we take the “I love solving problems and being analytical,” we can see that it not only applies to the medical field, but it also applies to business and engineering or teaching.
For example, I have a passion for seeing others succeed, I have a passion to share what I learn, and I have a passion to continue learning. These passions led me to start The Scholarly Coin, but this isn’t the only way my passion manifests itself. It also manifests itself in weekly phone calls and meetings with like-minded friends. Meetings that I often coin as weekly wisdom sharing meetings.
Start by Finding the Things You Love
Passion is more than what you love but start compiling a list of activities that you enjoy doing. Sports, math, reading, socializing, researching, writing, or even being in nature. Once you have figured out those core activities, even if it’s watching tv, dig a little deeper. Why do I love the outdoors? Why do I love reading? Why do I enjoy socializing? With a little deeper analysis, you will find that, maybe, you like making people laugh, or you enjoy seeing nature flourish, or perhaps you enjoy creating images in your head when you read.
Only you can decide why you enjoy a specific activity, and only you can be honest enough with yourself to apply that passion.
Once you’ve developed your findings, i.e., your internalized passions that can be pursued through many means, relate those passions towards majors or jobs. You will often find that this leads to more than one type of job. For me, I learned that numbers were what interested me, but not static numbers, not data entry or basic accounting, I liked to manipulate numbers, make forecasts, and make suggestions for how to improve numbers. I liked to see change.
Jobs that fit this category were finance, data analytics, business development, consulting, and marketing. Perfect, I had found a general area of study, business.
As you can see, finding your passions leads to a broad array of opportunities, but let’s not forget steps 2 and 3.
Step 2: Discover Your Aptitudes
Unlike step 1, that focuses on what you love, step 2 focuses on what you are already good at or inclined to improve at in the future. Discovering your aptitudes often starts by focusing on your strengths.
What subjects in school were you always good at? What physical activities did you excel in? What hobbies did your parents always brag about to other parents? These are the things that you will focus on in this step. If you’ve always been good with computers or had a knack for understanding complex human emotions, then going into computer science or therapy of some sort may be your path.
This step is often simple for most people, because as humans we like to over inflate our strengths and ignore or deflate our weaknesses.
If your strengths are interpersonal communication, empathy, and patience, then going into therapy, human resources, or sales may be your calling. Perhaps you find yourself on the other side of the spectrum, you’d classify yourself as strong in analytics, working with machines, managing resources, then you may find that you’d excel in accounting, administration, engineering, IT, or laboratory sciences.
As I stated above, this step requires that you be honest with your strengths and areas that you can grow stronger in. There are plenty of websites that can quiz you on aptitudes or strengths. O*NET’s Interest Profiler (O*Net) is one that I was required to take for a class during my junior year, and it aligned fairly well with my own analysis of myself. This describes more of interests, but the way we answer these questions will lead us towards our strengths. This is by no means the only quiz or test you should take, in fact, I would recommend you take a few different tests. One based on strengths, one based on aptitudes, and one based on interests (the O*Net).
Once you’ve discovered your passions and aptitudes, it’s time to move to the third step of the plan.
Step 3: Discover Your Desired Lifestyle and Benefits
This last step is the third, and hopefully least important step. This step involves thinking about what you want your life to look like after college. It’s time to picture what your life will look like 5 years after graduation. Are you spending time at home with your family? Are you traveling internationally for business? Are you getting called in late to do an emergency heart transplant?
Discovering your desired lifestyle can be broken down into three categories. These categories are income, time, and sacrifice (sacrifice is a hybrid between the two, as you will see later).
Income is straightforward, how much income does your, realistic, desired lifestyle cost? If you are of modest consumer habits you may not need the doctor’s salary. You may be just fine earning 60k a year as long as it’s a job you enjoy and with people you like. If a more “spendy” lifestyle is what you desire; a nice car, a big house, and swimming pool, then being a teacher probably won’t fulfill the income requirements. An investment banker on the other hand, or a neurosurgeon will meet those income requirements. However, income isn’t everything.
Time is the second aspect of lifestyle, and this weighs the cost of hours worked against valuable time-consuming hobbies, relationships, or experiences. Doctors not only work long hours, but they can also be on call, investment bankers work an average of 60 hours a week, and CPAs are known to work 80 hours a week during the tax season. On the opposite side of the spectrum, teachers work long hours but have much more free time during the summer, real estate agents can have slow workdays, and physical therapists don’t often have emergencies to run to.
If you are a workaholic, which 48% of employees in America consider themselves to be according to New York Post article (New York Post), then you may enjoy the long hours of work. After all, what you do for a living is your life. Others may think, “I have other things I want to enjoy in life besides working.” Your views on time will help narrow down career paths.
Lastly, is sacrifice. What are you willing to give up for your job. Maybe it’s travel. Maybe it’s money. Maybe it’s free time. Maybe it’s that hobby. Deciding what you are willing to give up for your job can help you pinpoint what is important and what jobs will provide that lifestyle.
Now that we’ve gone through all three steps, it’s time to put it all together and decide once and for all that common question: What major should I choose?
Putting the Pieces Together
You have all three pieces to the puzzle. You’ve solved yourself, now it’s time to solve how to decide what to major in college. With passions at the top of your mind, aptitudes not far behind, and desired lifestyle as a frame let’s put the pieces of the puzzle together.
As a general rule of thumb, if you can find a major, career, or field that aligns with your passions, your aptitudes, and desired lifestyle that should be your first choice, but many people won’t have that instant clarity. Instead, always look for jobs/majors that align with at least two of the steps. If you have a passion to create software, code, or design projects and a desired lifestyle that requires a higher income, computer science may be the path for you. If you love helping others learn, can’t help but teach others what you know, and are a strong communicator and listener, then it makes sense for you to go into teaching or consulting.
The list can go on and on, but you are the only person that can decide. Once you’ve gone through all three steps, you will have the necessary information to make an informed decision about your future.
Just remember, declaring a major doesn’t mean you are stuck with it, you may find that computer science wasn’t your jam, but marketing was instead. You may even be set on the medical field, like I was, just to have your mom ask about the finance program during a tour (which I promptly switched to).
Don’t be afraid to explore different things. Take a class here or there during your first few years, you can still graduate on time even if you do some exploring.
That’s all I have for you in this article, I hope that this sets you down the path you were meant to be on, and if it doesn’t (it’s not my fault) …
Until next time.
