I remember going into freshman year thinking that I had my whole career plan figured out. I was majoring in Journalism and figured that I would be set from there. However, after taking my first journalism class at San Francisco State that I hated, I realized that while this was the career path that I wanted to take, the program here wasn’t right for me: I was at a loss. All I knew was that I loved writing, and that I wanted to be a journalist one day.
The next semester, I took another journalism class, this time one that actually interested me. It was a photography class. Despite this, I still felt lost. Photography was a hobby for me, I couldn’t actually picture myself pursuing that career path. I spent most of my second semester trying to figure out alternative majors that I could take on. The only two that I was considering at the time were English and Communications, but those majors still didn’t appeal to me as much as Journalism did.
Then, I remembered that I had a friend that was a journalist, but she wasn’t a Journalism major, she was a BECA major. “BECA” or Broadcast Electronic Communication Arts, is a special major at my school for students that want to go into Broadcast. I decided to take a chance and applied to change majors. I found out that to quickly switch majors, I would have to take summer classes and ended up living in San Francisco for the summer to do that.
My friend that was a BECA major knew that I was staying up here for the summer, and encouraged me to apply to work with her at Youth Radio. I ended up getting the job and have been working there all summer, writing articles and curating content alongside others. This was one of my first experiences with Journalism, and has helped me realize that this is definitely the career path that I wanted to follow–and that I didn’t need to major in Journalism to do so.
My point is that it’s okay to start college and have no idea what you want to do with your life.
As a freshman, and even when you are older, you’ll have many experiences that will shape you and help you figure out what you want to spend your life pursuing, and it’s okay to change your mind again and again. You’ll figure out what you want to do eventually, so take it easy and enjoy your first year of college while you can.