TEEN CENTER :: COLLEGE CENTER

FRESHMAN JOURNAL: FEBRUARY 27, 2006
'A Government-Economics Concentrator'

By Julia Choe

There's a lot of segregation in college--and I'm not talking race. Choosing a major during college has become more than just one's field of study. It has come to define a person as a whole.

Pre-med, philosophy, or economics: each major brings to mind a different stereotype. For example, pre-meds are supposedly the crazies. They spend all day in working on organic chemistry problem sets and are the slightly maniac people of whom, deep down, we are all a little scared. Philosophy majors are people who are intense thinkers, perhaps a little too much so. It's hard to have conversations with them because they will either confuse you or depress you. Economics majors are money-hungry. They are already filling up their résumés so that after graduation they can transition easily into a Wall Street job filled with 80 hour workweeks and high paychecks.

With these unavoidable classifications, not knowing one's major can be almost the equivalent of not having an identity. Not surprisingly, choosing a major is one of the most significant decisions of any college student's experience.

Like many other people, I entered college with a somewhat vague idea of my major, or "concentration," as we call them here. I knew I liked political science, but I also enjoyed literature, French, and philosophy. For some reason, I was fascinated by linguistics, though I didn't exactly know what it was. I decided I would take classes in each area and eventually find a field I truly enjoyed. Unfortunately, this was not as easy as I had envisioned. For one thing, it would be impossible to take all of the classes I was interested in before sophomore year, when I would have to declare my concentration. With only four or five classes a semester, including general requirements, I had to narrow down my choices before the year even started.

When looking at the course catalog, it was a daunting task to pick out only a few classes from the endless lists in each area. Another problem was one of practicality. Though many people seemed to have no qualms about majoring in Folklore and Mythology or Religion, I personally didn't have the same sort of faith that a degree in any sort of field would enable me to find a job after graduation. Keeping these issues in mind and praying I would not fall in love with philosophy as a field of study, I picked my classes and tried to keep my mind open for potential concentrations.

Luckily enough, I found that I loved my first-semester government class about international law. I looked forward to doing my reading and loved going to the small classes in which we discussed the week's topic. In fact, I enjoyed it so much that I realized I could imagine myself doing the same kind of work as a career. At the same time, I unexpectedly started to enjoy economics as well, and decided that I wouldn't mind doing economics as a joint or secondary concentration. As of this moment, I can declare myself a government-economics concentrator, and I feel fine accepting all the negative or positive connotations each one entails. Now, I am much more relieved because I can look ahead to the upcoming years with a clearer sense of what I will be studying. But on a more important note, I am actually excited about my future classes. The thought of being able to take classes I want in the fields that I enjoy is amazing. The huge book of potential courses is no longer an unmanageable mess of classes, and I even think I might enjoy writing my thesis (of course, I probably won't be saying that once I actually start writing it).

A lot of people like to say that undergraduate majors don't matter and that it's only graduate school degrees and work experience that count. They mean well. But considering that an undergraduate will spend around three years taking classes in their field of study, I definitely think majors are more important than people assume. Given that, though, I still feel it is impossible to decide on a major before coming to college. Taking a subject in high school and enjoying it can be completely different from taking the same class in college. It's the difference between reading a few pages of summary and reading an array of dense books that delve into the most specific details imaginable on a topic. And despite what I alluded to earlier, I wouldn't really take the stereotypes of each major into consideration--while we all may laugh at the jokes about each one, as with many stereotypes, most people know better. In fact, choosing a major is a great part of college, because it allows each person to find a subject that he or she enjoys enough to study in depth. It's confusing at first, and a little overwhelming for some. Ultimately, though, I think it is one of the most rewarding parts of being a student at university. Hopefully next year, when I actually have to start fulfilling my concentration requirements, I'll still feel the same.