The number of high school seniors deciding to open the doors to college dorm rooms by the time their graduation caps have hit the ground has continued to increase. This influx of freshmen produces an outpouring of seniors once again in four years, who this time begin setting up another, similar stage of their lives that is saturated with competition among their peers.

What can be done at this time in your life when soon nearly everyone will be attending college and your once small, intimate material science course with class size of 13 students (with a few Ph.D. pursuers among them) suddenly bears resemblance to a 400 student auditorium-sized Psych 100 lecture hall? During your four-year experience, it isn't something everyone thinks about.

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The Life Of A Double Major

Learning Outside The Box

Post-graduation is another story. Instead of helping each other in the library pulling all-nighters during midterm and finals week, you're racing from your double parked car in the parking lot to beat the other interviewees at signing in in the lobby of the third Fortune 500 company on your list. It's fair to say we aren't there yet, but it is a growing concern that simply doing well in your prescribed major coursework is no longer enough. It hasn't been for some time.

Academic advisers in high school as well as here at Penn State and other universities across the country have been encouraging students to pursue interests that are “resume builders”. By participating in extra curricular activities such as: sports, fraternities/sororities, robotics, debate, community service, among others, you are demonstrating your value to a potential future employer at the Bryce Jordan Center that you not only have the 3.5 GPA average cut off to apply to their company, but you excelled at maintaining a social and active lifestyle simultaneously.

For quite some time this has been the academic advisers' and career learning center's dogma handed down to students who ask about resumes and help finding success with employers. However, as new fads and trends become popular in fashion or social media, so do behaviors and norms begin to form in the student body in the world of academia. What some perceptive or simply over-achieving students have recently been acquiring is a second major or one or more minors. This can do nothing but help you. Here are some supporting reasons to make your life possibly twice as hard as it already is:

1. You get two pieces of paper with fancy writing on them at graduation.
2. You get to stand up twice.
3. Higher marketability to *employers.
4. You take more classes. This challenges you as much as it may or may not let you take more classes you enjoy. Unless you don't like the major(s) you are in, then it simply challenges you, twice.
5. Meeting more people and professors simply by taking more classes. Networking is essential to every college student's experience and can lead to lifelong friendship and/or mentor bonds.
6. If you are in a major you don't like but are already committed, you get to pursue something you deem worthwhile**.
7. You get X number of advisers for X number of Colleges you are apart of. This is really an overlooked assistance and perk for students who have enough on their plate and need the aid of someone trained at deciphering degree audits. For example they can show and approve taking two classes that overlap instead of taking four to satisfy both majors' requirements.

*Sensible employers--a second major that compliments the one currently being taken only boosts the possibility of you being an asset to the position you are applying/interviewing for. No employer will look at a recent graduate's resume and frown that he/she has a degree in that field and also in Mathematics.

**Some may see this and think it lowers your value you when you walk in to some tech company with a dual degree, one in Computer Science and one in English. The first thing to tell yourself is that the only thing the company recruiter is qualified to judge you on is your aptitude and knowledge of CS and programming.

Brush aside any nay-sayers who criticize your choice to explore and learn. A second major isn't a waste of time, and English among other majors provides students with necessary communication, reading, and writing skills that are vital to any profession. As polar opposite as a pair of majors may appear at first glance, even if for only your enjoyment, add Art History, or Theater, or Political Science, or Accounting, or French and Francophone Studies.