According to Qualifax, we spend 71% of every year on the job. This comes down to 31.5 years out of the 45 we spend working in our average life. Intimidating, isn't it?
Choosing a major has a life-long impact on you because it determines your career path in life. Your major can either open or close doors for you, so it's an important career decision.
While it may seem unfair to make such a decision early, it helps to be informed and guided by your mentors, teachers, and expert education advisors. To ease your confusion, we have come up with a list of things that will help you decide on a major path.
How Your Major Can Decide Your Career Track
For starters, your major can shape which route your career takes. Choosing a degree in social sciences sets you up less for corporate jobs and more for jobs like teaching and working at NGOs.
Similarly, choosing a specialized field like computer science opens many doors for you in this technology-oriented world. Other majors like a bachelor's in education are trickier for this environment because of a saturation of supply and low demand for teachers. This makes it difficult for aspiring students to get a job once they enter the job market.
How to Choose a College Major
Skill-set
Skills are a valuable asset to possess in this day and age because many jobs recruit based on skills instead of your major. Everyone has a unique skill set or talents that they can use to build a career of their choice.
Skills are often based on personal interest and personality, which allows you to shape a career that will match your personality. It is ideal to look for majors that support your skillset. For example, suppose you are someone that can read very fast and has a good grip over punctuation and grammar. In that case, you can opt for linguistics and become a proofreader for publishers. Proofreaders are very much in demand in today's day and age.
On the other hand, if you are good at coding and programming, it's great to choose a major that supports this development, like computer science. However, not all skills are hard skills; some can also be classified as soft skills. These include integrity, creativity, critical thinking, adaptability, and organization. These usually extend from a person's personality and shape how they work with others and on their own.
You may not be aware of your soft skills; therefore, you need help identifying them. You can ask fellow students and workers to help you or consider your awards and achievements.
You can also contact some professionals in the field, like your instructors, to determine which skills they consider the most important for the field and the major you want to choose.
An additional way to approach a skill-set-based decision is to consider your personality. According to John L. Holland, people fit into six categories: realistic, artistic, investigative, social, enterprising, and conventional.
He says there is a link between personality types and careers/majors. For example, according to his research, practical and independent people should go for careers like biology, nursing, or anthropology. But creative and imaginative people should go for careers in art, marketing, communication, and English, which are careers that tend to be less restrictive.
The good thing about skill set-based decisions is that they ensure that the work keeps challenging you and pushing you to grow. A skill set is never stagnant, it has to adapt and grow, and it has to be polished to ensure that you put your best foot forward when doing your work.
Personal interest and flexible choices
Your major has a significant impact on your life and career path and how you experience college life. Your major influences your potential to network, which clubs you join, and the people you meet at college.
Since college majors have such a wide-reaching impact on a student's life before and after college, it is ideal to choose an area you are interested in. Students should opt for fields they are interested in exploring while also building up their skill set.
Interest in your major is an excellent way to keep the momentum going. If you do not enjoy what you are studying and dread going to your classes, you will likely flunk your courses and put in less effort.
On the other hand, if you enjoy your lessons and the subject matter, you will not only put in the adequate effort, but you may go above and beyond for some courses you enjoy.
Your personality shapes your interests. The interests you have can lend themselves to different careers. It is valuable to note what hobbies or interests you have developed over the years and examine them. This includes things like past volunteer experiences and traveling or even part-time teaching.
Admittedly, the information is out of professional context, but making a list of activities can help narrow down the career path and the major path. You may enjoy a career and major in marketing if you like understanding what makes people tick and meeting new people.
Furthermore, you can use this knowledge to opt for internships and volunteer opportunities to explore the option and approach it with a critical eye. A fresh experience can help you understand if the job appeals to you as a career or not. You can also think about taking on some courses or certification programs for fields that interest you.
Similarly, it is also helpful to think of the core values that you hold close to yourself before choosing a major. Core values are personal ethics that you keep in mind when operating in the workplace. They guide decisions, relationships, and the way you solve problems. There are five common core values: autonomy, integrity, innovation, growth, and service.
Identifying these values can help you find jobs that align with your ideals and ideas. Values influence some of the most important career decisions you have to make, like your lifestyle and the work environment you choose. If you can identify which values are most important to you, you can easily eliminate some majors and careers from your list which do not support them.
However, a major is not set in stone. If you think you are interested in one thing but lose interest after studying it closely or develop an interest in another field, you can always switch majors. In most universities, you do not have to declare a major immediately and have a year or two of studying before declaring it.
Academia focused
Some people enjoy learning; they like figuring out how the world works and understanding the works of different writers who explain phenomena such as society and its institutions. On the other hand, some people may be in medicine but also vastly interested in the workings of various procedures, improving on them, and sharing their findings. You can have an academic-focused career for virtually every major. Some people become researchers straight out of college, and others become one after serving the society for a while.
Academia-focused majors are for those who clearly understand that they want to research, experiment, and publish. Those who want to go the extra mile can choose to become instructors at various universities and colleges. It is helpful to confer with your teachers and instructors at college to understand whether this major/career path is for you. You need to love learning, and the process of learning requires it. You also need to be patient and welcome criticism of your work, for it only helps you grow. Taking criticism personally is very dangerous in academia and hinders your growth significantly.
It is both a demanding and thankless job in some cases, and it may only be meant for those who are genuinely passionate about their work. Passion is a key ingredient in this case because writing a thesis or dissertation involves a lot of time and hard work. You need passion to help keep the momentum going and stay excited about what you are learning along the way.
It is also essential to keep flexibility in mind, meaning that you should be able to do your job anywhere in the world should you choose to do so.
As demonstrated, you can choose a major and career according to three major focuses. But if you are still confused after reading this article, you can discuss your career and major decisions in further detail with us by booking a free consultation session today!