During my junior year of high school, I toured basically every college in the state. But for some reason, there wasn’t a college that just clicked. I remember sitting in my AP classes with the people who seemed to have it all figured out (NC State, Chapel Hill, Duke) and felt so inferior to them due to my lack of a plan. I had finally resorted to touring out-of-state colleges, accepting that I could never be happy in a NC system university, when I visited the last school North Carolina had to offer. I remember walking around UNCC’s campus and thinking that this had to be that “clicking” feeling. The best part was that Charlotte had one of the best business schools in the country, which had been my plan for years. Ever since that day, I was annoyingly obsessed with Charlotte. It was never a secret where I was going to college to anyone who knew me. I applied early admission and got my acceptance in early November my senior year, and I’m not embarrassed to admit that I cried. Very soon after, my UNCC sticker was on the back of my car and UNCC ’19 was in my bio.
I’ve always been the kind of person to have a plan- and once I do, I don’t change it. My plan had been a double major in marketing and public relations, and I promised myself I would graduate with both bachelor’s degrees. There was only one problem… I hated business school. Right-brained is my middle name, and I hated everything about my major. During my second semester, I decided to drop business and become solely a communications major. I was pretty happy with that choice for a while.
This past fall semester, things began to change for me. I began to realize, in a lot of different ways, that I simply wasn’t the person I thought I was and had always been. I was tired. Tired of being what everyone wanted from me- my friends, my family. I just wanted to be me, but I had no idea who that was. I stopped going out and hanging out with a lot of people, and my grades suffered drastically. As someone who has consistently been on honor roll and dean’s list, and is even ahead in school, I had never struggled with academics before. I began to question everything about myself, everything I thought, and everything in my life. Many people didn’t understand this sudden change and had no idea that I was struggling. Some were angry at me, some distanced themselves, and most just didn’t know how to act around me. Though this period of self-doubt was hard, I adjusted and changed my life for the better. I added a second major, history, something I’ve loved my entire life. I had the new semester to look forward to, and lots of interesting subjects to invest myself in. I found more meaningful activities to invest my time in, like my passions that had been put on the back burner because of my lifestyle. I had surrounded myself with people who would do anything in the world for me, and I began to mend relationships that had become lost in my process of self-discovery.
The semester began, and I was absolutely in love with my history courses. I only had two really difficult courses left to complete to declare upper division: French 3 and Stats. I made an appointment to officially declare history as my second major, and walked into the office so excited for the new chapter in my life. While the advisor checked my transcript, he made a couple offhand comments about how I had completed all my pre-requisites and inquired as to why I was taking two courses that I didn’t need. “Wait…you mean that I don’t need French 3 and Statistics for a history major?” I asked, doubtful but hopeful. I had realized that I wanted to spend all of my time and energy studying history, and I didn’t want to waste my time in communications anymore, but I had already made it so far in the major and I knew it was the more practical choice. After all, what would I do with a history major? He confirmed that those courses were unnecessary, and it increased the desire to drop communications and just forget about French and Stats.
The next day, I went to my first two classes of the day as normal, had my break for lunch at 1:45, and headed to French for my 3:30. I walked in the class, sat in my usual seat in the first row, and pulled out my laptop to prepare for class. I started to get out my French book and just stopped. I’ll never know how to describe the feeling that came over me, but I just knew. I was done. With communications, with making the “practical choice”, with doing what everyone else wanted me to do. I wanted to do something I loved. I wanted to spend every second of the rest of my college career studying history. I wanted the pointless, impractical major. Three minutes later, I had dropped French and Stats and was on my way to the Student Union, feeling more liberated than I ever had.
If you’re close to me, you know how obsessed I am with WWII- specifically the Holocaust. From an early age, I was completely fascinated by it. I started reading my mom’s books on the subject when I was young, and have been studying it ever since. For over ten years, I’ve been obsessed with a single period in history. One day last week, I was researching career options and grad schools for solely history majors, and I came across it. Six programs in the U.S. and a few in Europe. I remember the feeling I got and thinking to myself “this is it”. Holocaust and Genocide Studies. I also remember realizing how stupid this was going to sound to my family. “What are you going to do with it?” they asked, not in a ridiculing, but concerned manner.
The answer was simple: I don’t know. And for the first time, I felt like I didn’t have to. “Aren’t you supposed to figure out what you want to do and plan out how to get there?” my mother asked. That’s when I realized that I think everyone has it backwards. Maybe that’s why we hate school so much. We spend years and years preparing for what we actually want to do, which is why our degrees and the countless hours studying and the many all-nighters feel so completely ridiculous. Why don’t we study what we love, and then figure out what we want to do with it later? If you’re passionate about what you’re studying, it’ll never matter how much money you make or how big your house is or how fast your car goes.
So no, I have no idea what I want to do with my major. But I feel like I’m finally doing what college is all about. It isn’t about the parties, the alcohol, or the drugs. It’s not about making friends that’ll last a lifetime- although you will. It’s about finally having the freedom to be authentically you. To finally be who you want to be, no matter what anyone says. Call my major stupid, pointless, or a waste of money. I won’t care because I know you’re wrong. My major isn’t irrelevant or pointless simply because it makes me happy. While some are content spending thousands of dollars and years of their life working towards a degree for a job they’ll hate, I’ll be spending my time happily working towards a pointless degree I love. I don’t have a plan. I don’t have a career in mind. I have no idea what I’ll do after school. But for the first time in my life, I feel like I’ve actually figured it out.