Choosing a major was one of the most stressful decisions I’ve ever had to make in college. Picking a major straight of out high school was basically letting an adolescent freshman eighteen year-old self decide my own future career. 

 For some small percentage of the undergraduate population, people go into college knowing exactly what they want to do and stick with it. The rest of us pick a major, switch it on average three times and then question why we are even in college by the end of sophomore year.

As a junior, I’ve been through about three majors and I swore up and down that the one I started with was the one I wanted to stick with. Although, no matter what major I thought I could do, there was always one constant similarity between them: the criticism I got for being in a particular major.

This was especially frustrating because it was a specific subject I loved, got really excited about it and then someone would just shoot me down or try to stereotype me. 

Here’s the thing, a major doesn’t define a person’s personality. 

Interests and personality can go hand in hand, but a college major isn’t selling your soul to a particular destiny.

I for one enjoy being at a liberal arts school because my major may be social work, but I love history, political science, psychology, English and many of the sciences. I was originally majoring in psychology and after a while I resented talking about it because of all of the negative responses I would get from people. Whether it was telling me that half of the freshman class was a psych major or asking me what I could even possibly do with only a bachelor’s degree, it got very discouraging. To this day my love for the subject of psychology burns inside of me but I have chosen to be in a more diverse field that incorporates lots of my interests: social work

My advice: Own your major. Don’t let people discourage you from pursuing your interests. Social work isn’t a popular major and half of the people I talk to think they have me and my future career plans figured out. Don’t listen to people like this, they only know what they’ve been told. Worry about your major and future career plans, and I’ll worry about mine.