I guess colleges are used to students messing up. That may explain why they dedicated a whole class to bringing up problems like choosing the wrong major. Too bad I didn’t listen. I was confident in my choices. I could never mess up. I could never be like the others who discovered their major wasn’t right for them.
I had a plan and I was going to follow it: start as an RTF major, then add a journalism major later on. I’d get the best of both worlds!, I never for a second thought about giving one of them up. It was all figured out, right? Boy, was I wrong. Turns out, I think I finally came face to face with what psychologists call a personal fable.
“Personal fable refers to the belief among adolescents that they are unique and special, often leading them to feel invulnerable to harm and immune to the experiences of others.”
I swear I loved my major at first. I had a great appreciation for films. Everything intrigued me: the shots, the storylines, and the ability to create a story. Along with the major also came a great amount of compliments about how awesome my major was. It was something lots of people wanted to pursue, and who could forget about the cool classes you get to take! These constant sums of reactions did not help my problem. However, the signs it wasn’t the right major for me were always present. I had never gone on a student set. I dreaded the day I’d have to complete my project. I wasn’t in any film-related orgs. Instead, I was involved in the Daily Texan. Yes, the student newspaper. You see what I mean?
I stayed in my imaginary personal fable perfect world for all of the first semester. I think I was just on the high of experiencing so many new things that I was never able to stop and evaluate my decisions. I was fine, up until the very end, at least, that’s when reality came knocking. I was in shambles. All of a sudden, people close to me started supporting my RTF major, something I hadn’t encountered before. It was always seen as a major that was a “pipe dream”. Now people were seeing the reality of it, suggesting it’s what the world is turning to nowadays. Everyone saw journalism as a thing of the past. This straightforward, closed-minded thinking rubbed off on me. As someone who takes other people’s opinions very seriously, I was left in even more emotional turmoil. When I left for Christmas break, I knew I’d have to figure it out. What I didn’t realize at first was – there was nothing to “figure out”.
Even though I was constantly reminded that your career trajectory depended on your major and your experience, I still had the thought in my head that my major determined my whole life. SPOILER: It doesn’t. It took my stubborn mind forever, but eventually I finally understood that.
A major is meant to give you skills. In the communication world, that’s all it is. If you’re in the same position as I (a comm student), you can’t compare yourself to other majors. They have profession-specific driven paths: doctors, lawyers, nurses, teachers. As for us, we can contribute our skills to so many positions in the workforce. That being said, think of your major as something that prepares you for a general area in the field. What kind of skills do you want to have that you think will prepare you for what you want to do? Once I started looking at it that way, the decision to switch to journalism was easy.
Despite its current standing, the art of journalism will always be needed. Society needs accurate information, news. It’s evolving, and although it may cause doubts due to its unpredictable nature, it can be worth staying to see where it goes. The skills the major provides you with are ones that are detrimental to keeping the world in one piece, and that’s something I think is worth learning. The use of media and video may be the future, but journalism is woven into the fabric of time.
If I learned one thing from this situation, it’s that listening to yourself is difficult. It’s hard to unravel years of letting other people’s opinions impact you so much, but it’s worth working towards it. Also, choosing your wrong major isn’t the end of the world, like many people make it seem. Sometimes it takes a lot of mess ups to know what you want in life, and each resolved screw up is just one step closer to figuring it out.