The Worst Advice That You Hear a Dozen Times

Everybody hears it, so everybody repeats it.

When trying to choose a major to study in college, the common advice is:

"Study what you find interesting" or "Think about which classes you enjoyed in high school. Study those topics."

What awful advice.
The reality is that college is only for four or six or twelve years. The rest of your life will continue on for the rest of your life.

Ignore the bad advice

Here's the issue: When I was in high school, I really enjoyed my English classes. I enjoyed them a lot. I kind of liked the reading, and I kind of liked analyzing what we read, but I absolutely loved getting feedback on the papers that I wrote. I loved the attention and the praise I got from my teacher. I loved having my friends read my papers and tell me what a great writer I was.

I was three semesters into college when I realized that what I had enjoyed about high school english class had nothing to do with a career in writing. In high school, I was one of the best writers in my class. Everything I wrote was comparatively awesome. In college, I was competing (in my head) against the best writers from all the other high schools in the area. I was no longer a standout. I no longer got the praise that I had enjoyed. My friends didn't care to read my papers anymore. What little I knew of the writing industry told me that professional writers will often receive even less praise. Editors are not frequently lavish with praise to writers for simply remembering to cite specific examples or for using proper thesis statements.

Another way to pick a career... after the jump.



Better advice

My advice instead, when choosing a major, is to pick the career you want first. Then take the classes you need to get there. The added bonus of this process is that your classes become a lot more interesting when you can see how they are preparing you for a real job. For example, after deciding that I really wanted to be an engineer, math classes became a lot more tolerable. I went from being a kid who failed algebra in high school, to an engineering student that became fluent enough in calculus that I volunteered as a math tutor for fun. (Somehow that statement seems a lot nerdier now that I write it down for others to read. Whatever. I like math.)

In summary, for those of you trying to decide what to study, first pick an interesting, rewarding career path. School will be a lot more valuable if you do.