I was nothing but a clueless 18-year-old high school senior trying to figure out which way was up. Then one otherwise uneventful day, I found myself sitting in front of my counselor, the clock ticking increasingly faster and faster with each discarded idea.
He looked back up at me and said, “Well, what’s it going to be? Now is the time to decide what you’ll be doing for the rest of your life!”
I had to excuse myself. Nausea, you know.
So naturally, I went back to my room and consulted Google. Bar graphs. A few mysterious college curriculum names sitting on the horizontal axis. Increasing dollar amounts climbing up the vertical.
“Well, I kind of like chemistry. Let’s go with that one!”
And then, before I knew what was happening, I was majoring in chemical engineering.
That isn’t to say I don’t enjoy my major, but it is to say I picked it without any idea what it was, and almost solely for financial reasons.
So, what’s the big deal?
When I chat with my classmates, we almost exclusively talk about our test grades, internship opportunities and job aspirations. I can’t remember the last time I heard people talking about how much they enjoyed calculating flow rates.
I don’t particularly like it, either.
As it goes, I had somewhat of a mid-school crisis last year. Of course, I tried to take a page out of a sitcom script and buy a Camaro to make myself feel better, but then I realized I was a poor college student, which brings me back on topic.
I remember one night I was working on a homework problem, and after coming up with my tenth correct answer that didn’t match the book’s, I sat up straight, eyes wide:
“Do I even actually like this? Have I ever actually liked this? Is my name even Ryan? Because I, like everyone who hears my name before seeing it written, have always had this sneaking suspicion that it was actually Brian.”
Suddenly, all the synthetic comfort hanging on promises of a high salary went flying out the window. I realized I had spent two and a half years, hundreds of dollars in books and most of my physical and mental health on something I never even wanted in the first place.
And if I turned back at that point, not only would everyone see me as a quitter. I would have to start all over on something new, which for all I knew, I might end up hating too.
It’s hard to describe that feeling, but it’s kind of like if you gave up everything else in your life to climb Mount Everest, trained nonstop for years, got a little over halfway up … and then decided you regretted picking your major in college.
That said, as we all know, opinions change. Over the course of a few months I decided I did, in fact, want to stay in my major. I came to the conclusion I wasn’t just in it for the money, and I genuinely wanted to grow up to be a chemical engineer.
Lucky for me, right?
Right, but my individual case doesn’t detract from the importance of regarding your major for more than its expected paygrade.
It could just as easily have gone the other way; deciding I wanted to do something else. And if that had happened, I’d currently be scrambling to figure out which of my credits would transfer, how I was going to explain my choice to my dad and what the hell I was going to do with myself.
And that doesn’t sound fun.
So as I start my last year in what I wanted to do, realized I didn’t and then realized I actually did, I urge you all to be more considerate of your major choice than I initially was.
Ryan Monk is a 21-year-old chemical engineering senior from Lake Charles, La. You can reach him on Twitter @RyanMonkTDR.