For as long as I can remember, my conversations with teachers, friends' parents, and most other adults about my college experience has been centered around my major. Aside from a brief period of time during junior year of high school when I was certain I would become an engineer, my response to "What are you majoring in?" has often been "I'm not sure yet" or a list of a few potential majors (from all kinds of departments at my University) I have yet to narrow down. Almost every time I reach this point in the conversation, whoever I'm talking to tries to ease my mind with "Oh don't worry, you still have plenty of time to decide." For a long time, I felt that this was true, and I wasn't worried. Throughout my first year of college, I had my heart set on studying Economics. And then on Comparative Human Development. And now I'm just as undecided as I was this time last year, but now I'm one year closer to graduating, one year closer to being seen and treated as a real adult, and one year closer to living on my own and joining the work force. Suddenly, it doesn't seem like I have "plenty of time to decide" my major, and much less what I want to do with my life.
Being surrounded by numerous people in my grade who came in knowing exactly what they wanted to study has been both inspiring and frustrating. I have grown up with an affinity for math and science (especially chemistry), and I thus assumed that someday, at some faraway time, I would have a major relating to one of these subjects and perhaps go on to Grad school, eventually using my degree(s) in the STEM field and living happily ever after. But that faraway day has arrived (or is approaching not-so-gradually), and I am as unsure about what I want to do with the rest of my life as I was as a kid -- if not more so.
When looking at colleges to apply to, I slowly realized that attending a liberal arts college would give me various opportunities to branch out and take a few classes not relating to STEM; the University of Chicago's CORE program, along with the various electives my school offers, allows me to do just that. And though I've learned from my Media Aesthetics class how to open my eyes and see movies and books for more than they may seem; I've realized my appreciation for the social sciences from my Intro to Economics classes; I've been amazed at how much humans have discovered (and how much there is yet to unearth) throughout my Chemistry lectures -- the main lesson I've taken away from it all is that there are too many incredible options for me to be content with picking a single subject to devote my life to.
Although it all seems overwhelming at times, and it appears as though time is running out -- deadlines to declare a major are quickly approaching, picking classes is apparently a never-ending cycle of uncertainty and luck -- whatever it is that I decide to study for the next few years will not be the be-all and end-all. I will still be fascinated by electives that I take, not despite them being unrelated to my major, but because they are. I will still acquire skills that will come in handy in my future jobs. I will most likely not find my career path at the first job I land out of college. And that's all okay. In reality, no one really has it all figured out; even those who plan and plan can't predict what curve balls life will throw. So even though the clock is ticking down to the moment I must officially decide what to study, to the moment I accept a job offer, to the moment I graduate college, I do truly still have plenty of time to figure it all out.
