Trouble, trouble, troubo-oh-oh-oh-ohllllle
Two years ago, when I was applying for college (man, does that make me feel old…) I made a bold, completely arbitrary decision that I was destined to be an International Relations major. Did I have any experience in international relations? No. Was I particularly interested in global affairs? Not really, but I did a pretty great job of pretending. Had I even ever left the country? Absolutely not.
I attended approximately a gajillion college visits over the course of my high school career. Even though admissions representative after admissions representative told me that I didn’t really need to know what I wanted my major to be, I still felt pressured to have some sort of vague idea of what I wanted to study in the next chapter of my life. You can hear someone say “Our most popular freshman major is ‘Undecided’” thousands of times (and trust me, I did), but it really isn’t that reassuring.
So one morning over breakfast, in the blink of an eye, I told my mother that I wanted to study International Relations, and it stuck. My entire college search became centered on finding schools with good International Relations program, even though I felt pretty “meh” about the field of study as a whole. Instead of dealing with those feelings, I pushed them away and told myself that the subject would grow on me. Also, people sounded kind of impressed when I told them I was going to study affairs of the world, and I was pretty sure I could get a job eventually, so I figured things could be a lot worse.
When course registration rolled around that summer, I ended up enrolling in a class that would be my first step towards fulfilling Clark’s International Development and Social Change major. That particular class also ended up being my first step in an existential, major-themed crisis; I hated International Relations, and withdrew from the class after just two class sessions. After sitting through a cumulative two and a half hours of that class, I knew it deep down in my bones that I had made a big mistake, and that all the money in the world wouldn’t be able to convince me to pursue a degree in International Development and Social Change. I found myself waist-deep in some major trouble (HA. Get it?)
Not knowing what I want to study felt both freeing and extremely alarming at the same time. I hadn’t really ever not known what I wanted in a very long time. I knew that I had to figure out what I wanted eventually, but I also knew that I didn’t have to have everything figured out until the end of my sophomore year. On the other hand, I didn’t want to be a free floater forever, so I came up with a battle plan; for the spring semester, I decided to take classes in four different subject areas that I thought I could potentially interested in. Luckily, the only subject that really floated my boat was Environmental Science, a subject that, hilariously enough, I detested in high school.
This really isn’t an uncommon phenomenon. At an admissions presentation I attended in New York, I heard that liberal arts students change their majors (whether officially or otherwise) an average of eleven times. This may be a blatantly exaggerated statistic, but there definitely is some truth to it. It’s far from uncommon for students to end up leaving with a degree in a different subject than the one they had intended studying when they first stepped on campus. I think a lot of this can be contributed to Clark’s Program of Liberal Studies (PLS), which requires that students explore eight different subject areas. When you’re fulfilling the requirements, you end up getting to dabble in other subject areas. This allows you to not only see if you’ve been completely blind to your love of physics, or any other subject you had never really known that much about, but also to still gain a holistic education.
In the end, everything worked out. I know it can seem absolutely terrifying to not know what you’re going to study, but Clark has tools and resources to help you figure that out. So maybe you’ll apply to college knowing exactly what you want, or maybe you won’t. If you’re in the latter situation, don’t worry about it; in a few years from now, you’ll have it all sorted out.