I Found My Unique Major By Chance And I Was Very Lucky
I am one of few in my entire school with my major, and I love that.
I have a super unique major. In fact, my major has less than 10 kids in it in the entire school. That's small and for a long time during my freshman year, I was the only freshman in my major.
My major is Earth Science Education, and not many people anywhere have heard of it. Not many people know what the major entails, and they ask me a lot of questions about it. To be honest, I found my major by chance.
Growing up, I wanted to do two things with my life. I wanted to change the world, and I wanted to be a meteorologist. It was a struggle to find out how being a meteorologist could change the world.
I needed to bridge that gap. The closest thing I could find to bridging that gap was that if I can predict weather more accurately, I can save someone from being killed due to a severe weather event. Although that's possible, it's not really changing the world in my eyes.
At least it's not the type of change that I want to make in the world. The type of change I want to make in the world is all about educating people, having us be more tolerant and accepting of others, and to emphasize why we need to be ourselves in this big and scary world. That's the core of the change that I want to make in this world, but world peace would be nice as well.
I want to inspire people to be themselves and to be the best version of themselves. I know it's possible and I know I can do it because my teachers have inspired me to be the best version of myself while being myself. That's the change I want to make in the world, and I realized that as a meteorologist I can't make that type of change.
I realized this during my senior year of high school. I was applying to colleges, and for some reason, I wasn't excited to become a meteorology major anymore. I had just written my common app essay on why meteorology fits me and is the perfect science for me, but I wasn't in love with it anymore.
If someone had bashed the science of meteorology before, I would defend it with everything in me. After I stopped loving it, if someone had bashed the science, I would be slightly annoyed, but I wouldn't defend it anymore.
This realization put me at a weird crossroads in my life because I was still passionate about it, but I knew it wasn't what I wanted to do with my life. I was confused and scared, and I felt like I had to reevaluate everything. For about two months in my life, I felt like I didn't have a plan and for someone like me, that was the scariest thing in the world.
It was also the worst timing because it was during the two months while I was waiting for responses from colleges. That meant that as soon as I got into a school, I would have to look at its other majors to see if I was interested in anything else.
There were some schools that I applied to solely because they had an amazing meteorology program. I didn't look at any of their other majors because I didn't think that I would have this life-crisis. This challenged me, and it was scary.
Then one day in early December of my senior year, I got the clarity I had been begging for. I was tutoring someone for a class, and I really enjoyed the time. I liked breaking down how I learned things and I liked teaching them and seeing the look on their face when they finally understood something. It was inspiring to me.
The next period I had gone to my math class, and I was helping my math teacher hand out papers. As I was handing out papers, I had this epiphany and this realization that I could be doing this for the rest of my life. I saw myself being a teacher and instructing a class for the rest of my life in that moment.
That gave me some really good clarity, and that sent me into this exploration phase. I had to find a major at all of the schools that I had applied to that somehow combined meteorology and teaching. My top schools at the time were the University of Delaware and George Mason University.
For weeks on end, I was searching and looking at all of the majors that both schools offered in hopes that I would get into both. This caused me a lot of emotional turmoil in my life, and once again I had lost the clarity I had been craving for. Then about a week before I got into George Mason, I had found that the University of Delaware had offered Earth Science Education.
I was going through this huge list of majors and minors that UD offered and as I was scrolling, I saw Earth Science Education. I clicked on the major to see what were the required courses, and everything clicked. I had found the perfect major for me.
This was the perfect major for me because it combined my two passions flawlessly. I got to combine my love for meteorology and my passion for teaching all in one. I didn't have to double major or anything like that, it was all in one major and it was convenient.
When I looked at what George Mason had to offer, it would've been extremely difficult to combine those two passions. That's what ultimately made my decision to go to UD over George Mason. I had the ability to fully follow my passions.
Before I switched my major to Earth Science Education officially, I took some time and thought about it for a long time. In fact, I took 4 months to even request to switch my major from the time that I realized I wanted to be a teacher over being a meteorologist. This was a big life decision for me.
Ever since I was 7, I thought I wanted to be a meteorologist, and now I want to be a teacher. I wanted to make sure that it was something that I actually wanted to do with my life, and it wasn't a phase that I went through. I spent hours and hours thinking, discussing, and journaling about this and just the thought of me being a teacher felt right.
That's why on April 9, 2017, I requested to switch my major from meteorology to Earth Science Education. On April 24, 2017, my major change request got approved and I screamed and jumped out of happiness. It was one of the happiest days of my life.
That's how I found my major and was able to combine both of my passions. It was all by chance and random.
