As a junior in high school, most schools begin to put the pressure on students to start thinking about college and the steps they have to take in order to get into the school of their dreams which will potentially set the path into a career. The SAT’s become a major focus, along with raising your GPA as fast as possible and getting involved in as many extracurriculars as one can. If you’re an upperclassman in college, maybe working and other responsibilities take priority over being a full time student. But within the hustle and bustle of putting together the perfect resume and transcript, it may be difficult to decide on a specific major or focus that you would like to pursue once you get into that school.
They say that you don’t necessarily have to declare a major until your sophomore year in college, but I know, at least for me and a couple personal friends, it’s easier to go into a specific program instead of experimenting and figuring it out when you get there. Getting ahead and being proactive was emphasized highly while I was in high school so I decided to declare journalism as my major.
Now, I always knew I loved to write since I was a little girl, so it wasn’t really forced on me to declare that as my major but as I learned more and more about the industry, there was a point where I questioned whether or not I made the right decision. I started thinking about the competition in the field, especially being a woman of color in the industry. I started thinking about the pay and the smaller jobs I’d have to go through in order to get to the big picture, which could take years. I started to panic, which led to writer’s block, which then led to another wave of anxiety about losing my creativity. I didn’t know what to do.
I ended up nailing an internship at Westchester Magazine over the spring semester of my sophomore year, and that was when it really clicked that maybe I did make the right decision. I got hands-on experience, was given assignments that were going to be published which forced me out of my writer’s block and got to understand the industry even more than I already did. The thrill of getting to conduct interviews, contact sources for information, compiling information and being able to compose articles about things that I actually found interesting was all that I needed to reassure myself of why I declared my major in the first place.
I am currently a first semester junior and majority of my classes are now focused around media, communications and journalism in which I had to do projects that involved me playing the role of a journalist around my campus, then in Pleasantville and then in NY overall. I also got involved in writing for more publications like Her Campus, the Pace Chronicle, and now starting up a personal blog. All of my classes as well as my internship played a huge role in motivating me to keep writing and it kept my creativity flowing which made me remember how much I loved to write.
Basically, what I am trying to get at is that if you’re a student who doesn’t know what they want to do yet, it’s okay. Like they say, you don’t have to make any decisions before your sophomore year so if you are undecided, take advantage of those years and experiment as much as you can. If you are like me and declared a major as soon as you could, give that major a try. Take as many classes as you can within your major curriculum, take an internship somewhere in that field of study and talk to people with experience in the field. Networking and gaining experience is so important when it comes to college- you’re getting an education that can take you to different places in the world, why let it go to waste?