I’m going to take a shot in the dark and say that most people who are in college now are one of two things. One, not sure what they are going to put their degree towards and two, to set in their path of knowing what they are supposed to do that they are scared they made a wrong choice. If for some brilliant reason you aren’t one of these two things, I encourage you to keep reading anyways.

For me, in a university where Nursing, Pharm D and Engineering are abundant and shape most of the population, it is difficult not compare my non-practical science major of Psychology to that of my peers. How could you surround yourself with practical science majors and not question your own ability? I know I did and still do—well, as of two days ago that is.

Fast forward to a random Thursday afternoon and my jaw on the table after my former resident telling me he changed his computer science major to film. He explained to me that it had always been something that he wanted to do. And at that moment I thought why I had never asked myself that question. Simple—I was always defining my major as something lesser than that of the majority of my universities population.

For so long I pressured myself to take more practical science classes because I wanted to apply myself in areas that I never excelled in. Partially because I wanted to push myself but, mostly because I wanted to see myself as a “smart person” or I wanted others to think of me as one. Silly, right? Maybe it was because I saw these people as superior to me; I saw that they had their futures ahead of them. For them, college wasn’t an ambiguous time of finding which field to go into but rather a future set in stone. It wasn’t until talking about my confusion to a former resident that I realized that this ambiguous search was so much more appealing to me than a life set in stone.

In my painful back and forth thought process, I realized that the reason why I was in college was to experience what it is that I want to learn. For me, this is Psychology, Spanish and Environmental Policy. Prior to this realization, I was letting the conversations of others define how I felt about my own interests. Little did I know how much I was depriving myself of doing something that I actually love.

Some people, including yourself—actually, mostly yourself—will tell you to pile on that extra course work because your classes are “too easy” or because “science makes you smart” *insert confused me who did all of these things* I want to challenge you to turn off these voices in your head. Don’t feed yourself with false thoughts of your interests based on your peer’s ideals. Remember that you are the successor of your own major, career and field of interest. You can choose to scrutinize your passion or you can rock it so hard that you have AC/DC saluting you.

I challenge you to remember that college is not always a stop on a roadmap of your career. Sometimes it as a place for you to find out what exactly this career should be. You don’t, in fact, you shouldn’t know exactly what you want to do with your life as soon as you step foot into your first lecture. Heck, I’m a Junior and I just added a double major last year. Try to not get caught up in the idea of what you think you should be doing based on what other people around you are doing. That is the beauty of college; you can do you boo-boo. And that is the beauty of a non-practical science major; you can choose to take any track you please. Remember that college is not comparing yourself to other majors or demeaning other majors, but it is about finding where your passion lies so you can grace the world with it. Because, hey, if Malala was a Chemistry major, where would her passion for education and activism have been concentrated in and if Beyoncé went to school to be an Engineer, we would have probably never been graced with her Formation Tour (good thing we dodged that one).

We mustn’t shape ourselves to something so unlike us; because it’s then that we forget to admire the opportunities we have at our fingertips.