the spectrum- discovering what college major works for you

The speaker reflects on certain books and poems that everyone has read but eventually forgets. They talk about how "The Road Not Taken" by Robert Frost has stayed with them. They discuss their struggle to choose a major in college and feeling pressured to follow a certain path. They eventually switch majors multiple times before finding their passion in writing. They emphasize the importance of self-discovery and finding a major that aligns with one's learning style and aspirations. They share their own journey of changing majors and finding fulfillment in their current major. They encourage listeners to reflect on their past successes and failures to guide their future decisions. They conclude by sharing their hope that their college experience will inspire others to find their own calling. You know those certain books and poems that somehow everyone has read, maybe known by its high accolades and enforced by common curriculum, but as its relevance fades over time, their storyline becomes a broken memory that blends together with the next. The Old Man and the Sea, To Kill a Mockingbird, Fahrenheit 451, I know I flipped through their pages in an English class at some point, and their plotlines were intertwined in my memory, but they have since slipped away. That is for all but one, The Road Not Taken by Robert Frost. Maybe it's because it's short, and maybe because it's cycled through my curriculum more than a few times, but the last line is engraved in my brain. Two roads diverge in a wood, and I, I took the one less traveled by, and that has made all the difference. When I reflect on my 22 years of life, I somehow always fall back on this quote. Growing up, there's always been a certain standard set as to what the path to adulthood success entails. Now that I'm making bigger decisions towards my future, I found myself straying from that norm and not regretting it. You are listening to The Spectrum, a podcast that discusses the roads less traveled in life and how it's made a difference. I'm Maeve Burke, and in this episode, I'm going to be discussing finding your direction in college, specifically in majors and curriculum. College is seen as an opportunity to find your passions, but tied with a major specializing your knowledge to a specific field. For the majority of my life, I dreamt of being a journalist or a writer. I admired myself for having a career goal before I even entered the realms of college applications, let alone college. When I would explain my goals, I would always say, I don't want to sit behind a desk my whole life, but if I do, I want to make sure it's doing something that I truly love, and that was writing. Then I started getting the talk, the talk that entails finances, questions on how realistic this goal was, input from people who thought writing was a geeky field. I went into the realm of, I don't know what to do, and that realm settled me on marketing. When I started my freshman year, I realized that marketing was not the all creative flowing field it was in high school. All of my classes revolved around numbers and statistics, which has never been my strong suit. These classes, along with my gen eds, weren't necessarily anything I had any aspirations towards pursuing until I took my writing gen ed, which inspired a compromise in passion by minoring in writing, rhetoric, and technical communication, or WRTC. My sophomore year was an absolute struggle for me. Taking online courses due to the pandemic led to a major discovery in my own learning styles. My classes were test heavy and remained math oriented, burdening my GPA no matter how hard I studied. But my WRTC classes that assigned readings and discussions on these readings helped me learn more than the quizlet learn feature ever could. I found myself thinking more intellectually and looking into the deeper meaning of everything I approached. I loved my minor, and I absolutely despised my major. But at this point I was halfway through college. Why switch now? Have I really just wasted two years of my life on marketing to leave it in the dust for something I can't even come to decide on? My university advised us before classes even started that you should lock down your major by sophomore year if you want to graduate on time. Has it become too late? I made it two days into junior year before I switched to communications with a PR concentration. This was my best chance to graduate on time with no more math. All I had to do was get above a C in three communications classes and I would be in the major. This seemed so slight until I fell back into the tests and quizzes and quizlet flashcards all over again in classes that were honestly among the hardest courses I've taken in college. By spring semester I was checked out. I had spent three years barely scratching the surface of anything I was passionate about and this burnout earned me a big old denial into the communications program. I was devastated. How is everyone around me so content with where they are? Why does test taking come so easily to everyone around me? Why am I the only person I know that is approaching their senior year not even in a major? I was mad at myself for not being able to get out of this funk and mad at the world for leaving me in the dust. I painted myself as a victim of the education system. This world wasn't built for me and I'm ready to give up. Then it hit me. Why was I wasting my time chasing something I already had? At this point I don't need a major that is often associated with a high-paying job at the world's greatest corporations. I just wanted to be passionate again. I took the leap and I switched my major as a senior to WRTC. It has been four months since I made this decision and this is the first time in my whole life that I have straight A's. I'm still graduating on time. I've never been more in love with school in my entire life. I went from doing work because I had to to doing work because I want to. In my 14th week of fall semester, I can't help but think, is this how it's supposed to be? This experience has not made me an expert in securing a major, but I have found what works for me. After doing some research, my feelings were validated by a college student named Amy Milsom and a representative for the national counseling group named Julie Coughlin. They interviewed 10 students on their own major satisfaction in efforts to explain major dissatisfactions and the trends in becoming satisfied. Their study came to two conclusions, that the students' opinions on their major were based on what they learned about themselves and that meetings with advisors, specifically general advisors, was most helpful in finding a perfect fit. To quote them specifically, students' feelings of satisfaction or dissatisfaction with their college major resulted from a reflection on the information they had learned about themselves and careers. Outside influence will always impact life decisions, but it's your own self-confidence and aspirations that should override. Planning out how you want to build your future should be entirely your own to decide. By approaching someone with a common knowledge of all fields in a university, you can lay out your aspired career and ideal learning styles to find somewhere that can work best for your needs. But first, you need to identify them. I would say that it's a straight 50-50 on confidence and inspired career in college. Some people have a clear view as to the field they see themselves in, or even a specific role, and others have, at best, a general idea of what they can do. For that 50% that aren't sure what they want to do, this is a discovery that can be made in a general advisor meeting. But for the 50% that are sure, going to an advisor of a major of interest is a great way to learn if that major is a fit for you. Most full-time jobs aren't restricted to one major, so doing your own research into the majors within that spectrum and meeting with those advisors can pinpoint your options. With that being said, as I mentioned before, pinpointing a realm of majors isn't easy for all, but ideal learning styles is an often overlooked one that anyone can identify. Everyone learns differently, a seemingly obvious point, but let me give an example. I have a twin sister who is a kinesiology major. She learns best by making flashcards and diagrams and testing herself in terminology, but she hates writing papers, having group discussions, and doing presentations. Her major, at least at her university, fits her learning style immaculately, and she rarely faces the assignments she hates doing. As I elaborated on before, I'm the complete opposite, and my major supports my style of learning. A flaw within the education system is the one-size-fits-all approach to learning. Of course, there is no uniform way for all majors to build their curriculum, but there are obvious trends within certain majors. To find that middle ground between your aspired career goals and your ideal learning style is to identify how you've succeeded in the past and apply it to your success in the future. Assess your past assignments, college, high school, even grade school. What is an assignment that stuck with you? Something you enjoyed doing and what it entailed? Something you hated doing and what it entailed? Assess your past successes and failures, and what common traits they share. Doing this is what I needed to take that stride into my third major, and to draw back on my introduction, that has made all the difference. My own journey through self-discovery is what truly led me to where I wanted to be. It wasn't until I started to fail that I strove to succeed. As risky and idiotic as that sounds, this is common. Oftentimes, I find myself wanting to prove to myself that I'm making the right decision until it falls out of sight. Changing my direction almost feels like I'm admitting defeat, and admitting defeat feels like the lowest point I can reach. By changing that narrative to an opportunity to succeed, I found my approach to my education more rewarding. I've had three majors, spent three years in college not sure of my end goal. While that's not typical, it's not wrong. Six months ago, I was on the brink of withdrawing from my university and raising the white flag, and now I'm applying for graduation. All it took was a look inwards and a branch out into my resources, something beneficial to do in all walks of life. I hope that by sharing my college experience, another Maeve Burke out there can find their own calling. Thank you for listening to The Spectrum, and remember to appreciate the road less traveled by.