How I Chose a Major

If you haven’t read my previous posts on how I chose a college (Part 1 and Part 2), I recommend starting with those!

Similar to how I felt about choosing a college, I had no idea what I wanted to major in. I went to a private Christian university, so plenty of girls were tossing around jokes about getting an “MRS” degree, but I had no intention of finding my future husband at a school that was 2,000 miles away from the hometown I planned to move back to in two short years. And since I didn’t already have a Mr. Right waiting for me at home, that meant I had to decide on an actual degree.

They say you should choose a major based on your interests. Well, I was interested in shopping, photography, baking, and babysitting, and I liked to read, but only Christian fiction. (Oh, and let’s not forget celebrity gossip! Sadly this was an interest of mine at that point, too. 😂)

None of those things seemed to correlate much with any major I was aware of.

What I was sure of is that I wasn’t interested in accounting, chemistry, math, or theology.

I knew with certainty all the things I didn’t want to do; I just couldn’t quite find anything that did get me excited.

I’d already chosen a college because I figured that was at least one big hurdle out of the way. Now my selection of degrees was limited, because the school I’d chosen was a smaller Christian university with about 2,000 students. There were plenty of majors to choose from, but not as many as bigger schools might’ve had.

So I did the only logical thing: I went through the entire list of majors, read through the list of required courses for each one, and chose the major with the classes I thought sounded least boring.

I wish I had a more sophisticated-sounding story than that, but I don’t. That’s what I did. 🤷🏼‍♀️

I couldn’t subject myself to all those math or science classes – the horror! – and I definitely wasn’t looking to go into ministry. Business sounded kind of boring and so did, well, everything.

But journalism seemed like the least of all the evils, the area of study most up my alley.

I mean, I liked reading, right? And I did write a lot, just not for other people to read. Plus, a lot of people who liked photography went into journalism, didn’t they? It might’ve been a bit of a stretch, but it seemed like the only real choice for me.

Technically, my major was Journalism/Public Relations, and the “public relations” part scared me because it sounded decidedly extroverted, which I am not. But I figured I’d just deemphasize that part, tell everyone I was getting a journalism degree, and take more journalism courses and less PR courses.

There. Done. I was a journalism major.

I was officially a writer. It was decided.

…and, nine years later…here we are. 😊

Choices. They really do affect your life, even when you don’t expect them to!