People in today's world are always trying to determine their job based on the salary it brings in. I used to think that way in high school, looking at jobs that made a lot of money, and I always remembered thinking I would not be good at any of those jobs. I was never going to be a good lawyer, I couldn't be a doctor because I'm scared of blood, I couldn't weld, and the list goes on. My senior year though when I was looking into colleges, I stopped asking myself what job made the most money, and started asking myself what job would make me happy, and I found it.
I've seen so many people go to work and complain about their job, and I've even been guilty of it myself. It doesn't matter how well you can do the job, if you don't enjoy doing it, you're going to hate going into work. So I based my degree, and hopefully job, on three things: location, reliability, and the question would I enjoy it? Starting with location, I fired up my Google search engine, and started with general idea of what I liked doing, and how I could reflect that into my major. I then went on Google and searched many colleges in my home state, as I have a scholarship that allows me to attend any college in the my state with tuition and books paid for, and I found about six potential colleges that had degrees that intrigued my interests. I then cross referenced this search with job availability in the next 10 to 20 years. There's no point in getting a degree you can't get a job in. After acquiring this data I narrowed down the college list to three schools, and applied for all three.
blog.al.com, www.auburn.edu/admissions/, al.com
I received an acceptance letter from all three of these schools, and decided I had to dig deeper to decide where I wanted to go and what I wanted to study. Two out of the three schools were the schools I was expected to go to, and they both had the major I wanted. It seemed perfect. Something about the third school seemed intriguing, so I did more research into it. I ended up attending admitted students day to the third school and I fell in love. The campus was a perfect size for me, the people were beyond friendly, and the teacher to the major I now have was fantastic. I thought about the decision a little more and then I made my call. I chose to go to the smaller, less popular school for a major I knew only a little bit about because it was close to home, but yet far enough away, the job security for my major was high and the salary varied depending on the skills in the field, and I loved what the course offered. To this day, I still love my choice in major, and I love it more everyday. I can express my artistic side, and it will be my JOB someday. What more could you ask for?
So my advice for anyone reading this would be this: don't just pick a major because you think it will give you the most money, pick the major because you enjoy showing up for the classes and learning more about it every day. Then that way, when you go to find a job, you'll never actually "work" a day in your life, because you love what you do.
