Having to pick a major in my senior year of high school was probably one of the most stressful moments of my young life. Seriously, how am I supposed to plot my entire career path by declaring a major before I even start college? That’s like Michael Scott declaring bankruptcy by yelling “Bankruptcy!” from his desk—but I digress.
The point is, I didn’t know what to do. I liked writing, but I didn’t really want to be an English major. History was interesting, but I wasn’t involved enough to make a career out of it. I enjoyed learning about society, but sociology wasn’t necessarily something I wanted to pursue. And so it went on. I’ve had a lot of interests and hobbies over the years, but none of them were ever something I deemed worthy as a career path.
So, I picked the jack of all trades: communication. It sounded fun, it seemed cool and most importantly, it was vague enough for me to comfortably declare it before entering my first year of college, with all intentions of changing it as soon as I figured out what I really wanted to do.
But I never did change my major. Here I am, entering my third year at San Diego State as a proud communication student. All of the previous ideas that I had believed about my major were only misconceptions—that it was easy, that it wasn’t a “real” major, that it wasn’t worthwhile. I myself fed into these beliefs until I realized that they didn’t mean anything. (Who is important enough to deem a major, an entire specific area of study, as unimportant, anyway?) What you put into your major is what you get out of it, and I have certainly devoted a better part of my life towards the study of communication.
The most common question I have been asked after telling people about my major is is, “What are you planning on doing with that?” I usually like to answer with a simple “I don’t know,” because I don’t know, and that is what I like the most about my major. Communication is a field of chance and opportunity—you never quite know where it will lead you. Think you’ll get bored? Think again. You can take an experimentation and research class one semester and a class that studies the rhetoric of women in the next; you will never run out of new concepts to discover or new theories to analyze.
While other majors might have a straightforward, linear path towards success, being a communication major is like shoving your hand in the grab bag of life. You will never quite know what you will get, but pure curiosity will make you try anyway. As a communication major, I have the world at my hands. I can go into any profession I want—after all, isn’t communication the cornerstone of humanity? Every job requires some form of communication, and that’s where my major becomes an asset.
It might seem like I’m trying to brag, but I just want to express my appreciation for an underrated major that doesn’t judge me for my skills and expertise, but for my passion for the subject. Communication studies aren't about being the best communicator or being the best interpersonal mediator—it’s about actually wantingto study the material and wanting to learn more about how the world revolves around communication. To me, my passion for being a communication major far outweighs any doubt that I have had about finding a stable job after college.
I applaud those of you who are in difficult majors, ones that require expertise in math or business, ones that you have to devote hours of time and hard work towards graduating for, you are truly accomplishing academic feats that are admirable to anyone, regardless of what major you are. But don’t discredit my major just because you don’t find it to be intellectually stimulating enough. I am majoring in something that I am truly invested in and passionate about—how could you beat that?
