When I got my acceptance letter into Purdue, I was one of the happiest girls in the world. I felt like I had everything lined up and I would study Agricultural Economics that fall and start the best four years of my life. Then the plan was to get a job with a large agricultural company selling row crop seeds. But plans change. Since I am now in my junior year, I have been reminiscing a lot and I have realized my major was not the correct one for me.
Looking back, I realized it started in high school. Originally, I wanted to become a nurse, like my mother, but I quickly noticed it was not my career path after passing out in my medical terminology class. The next three years of high school, my career interest changed, going from family therapist to an artist. However, one thing stayed the same, I wanted to attend Purdue. When my senior year started, I applied to all the colleges I wanted to attend and at every school I applied to different majors because I had no clue what I wanted to do. I ended up being accepted to Trine for business, Manchester for environmental science, Valparaiso for art, and Purdue for agricultural economics.
Its pretty obvious which school I ended up choosing, but I did not change my major, even after being accepted. My first year I did not particularly enjoy my classes. I wrote this off as them being my pre requisite classes and I kept telling myself that all my classes pertaining to my major I would love. It was so hard for me seeing other students be so passionate about agriculture and I always felt like an outsider. When I was interviewing for internships that year, it seemed like every company asked me “why did you choose agriculture” and I would be stumped by this. I did end up getting an internship and it was what I believed I wanted to do for the rest of my life, selling seed. I absolutely loved my internship, I enjoyed all the people I worked with and wanted to go into work. I was so blessed to find an internship that helped me realize my career goals, even if it was not in that field.
My sophomore year I was so excited for new classes, I thought I would finally be getting into the classes I was going to enjoy and willingly roll out of bed for. This was not the case, I felt like I was so uninspired and just learning information to pass tests. I dropped out of most of my clubs that were related to my major, but joined an agricultural marketing club. I loved this club more than my classes. My favorite part was researching markets and making a plan for a product to promote. When career fair time came around, I wanted to try a marketing internship but when I would tell a company this they would look over my resume and tell me to apply to the sales internship. All of the interviews I had lined up were for seed sales, so instead I just worked at home.
It was not until this semester I finally realized that I went into the wrong major. I talked about it with people who I am close with and decided that I am going to graduate with an agriculture major and just tack on a communications minor too. I wish there had been more resources and outlets to talk to people when debating a major change, but sadly I have not noticed this on campus. At the end of the day, it will all work out, I have loved all the people I have met in my major and will be graduating with a Purdue degree.