Before I even showed up to campus, I changed my major.
It was from one major I wasn’t passionate about to another major I wasn’t passionate about. Why did I switch to it? I was told it was more practical. It wasn’t a BFA because we all know how useless art degrees are. As much as I really wanted to be a graphic design major, it didn’t seem like a practical choice.
Here’s the issue — maybe the skill set may be more highly valued, but if you don’t care about it, you’re as likely to succeed in as “practical” a major as underwater basket weaving. Simply put, the people who care about what they’re doing will come out ahead every time.
Let’s say I threw any kind of introspection or personal desire to the wind and went for a degree in computer engineering. Financially, this would make sense; careers that stem from that major have an obscenely high starting salary, according to this Forbes article.
But there isn’t any amount of money that could make me passionate about computer engineering. When the going would get tough (and it would get tough), there would be no internal drive to push me beyond the threshold. There would only be the vague promise of money at some point in the future.
Maybe the promise of success would be enough to push me to get through the classes. But even if that’s true, what then? What’s the end goal for this situation? You’ll find yourself a decade into a career that you don’t give a shit about, exhausted and apathetic, wondering how you ended up there. What’s more, you’ll be surrounded by people who genuinely do care about the job that you treat like a chore.
Because that’s the important thing that those Most Valuable Major lists omit — one person’s practical is another person’s passion. Maybe you're gritting your teeth to get through that multivariable calculus class, but the kid next to you is enjoying it. And if you’re hiring, which employee do you pick? The one who grimaces through the job for a paycheck or the one who genuinely cares?
Plus, the pay of a job is going to fluctuate over time. What happens if the market of your degree becomes flooded with other college graduates looking for a “practical” major? What will justify your decision then?
There is no amount of money that you could give me to make me care about computers more than the person who’s been building computers since he was 12. There is no amount of money you could give to a nursing student to make them care about typefaces like I do.
Passion isn’t a paycheck and it never will be.
Almost two years after I was accepted into RIT, I am (finally) a graphic design major, and I couldn’t be more satisfied. That doesn’t mean that I’m always ecstatic about going to class. That doesn’t mean I don’t have to jump through hoops of flaming bullshit to get to do what I want.
But I don’t mind. Passion isn’t wanting to do something. Passion isn’t liking something a lot. Passion is doing something in spite of how much it can suck, because not doing it is simply not an option.
