How to Choose a Major

If college were a video game, a major would be like the main storyline. Sure, there are plenty of side quests, surprises, and achievements to earn, but a major gives us an overall route, where we take classes to reach significant plot points and checkpoints. And save points. Hopefully, lots of save points. It's a major choice, and a pretty important one, so students tend to put a lot of thought into it. It's a hard thing to figure out on your own. Spending too much time in a major that isn't the right fit for you can waste time and money. Luckily, you have us. Hi, I'm Erika Brzozowski, and this is Crash Course How to College, a study hall series presented in partnership with Arizona State University. Today, we're going to talk about how to decide what to dedicate your entire life to. Just kidding, that would probably take a lot longer than 10 minutes. But we are going to talk about how to decide what to spend your college life doing. **INTRO** In college, there are hundreds, sometimes even thousands, of different classes to choose from. So with such a long list of possibilities, colleges build in some structure to help us wade through and create our own unique journeys. For instance, most colleges require students to pick a major, which is a student's intended area of study. When we choose a major, we take a set of classes that help us specialize our knowledge in a particular discipline, field, career, or skill set. Our major becomes a guide for what classes we take and where and how we spend our time. In fact, a major is really what we get a degree in. So on our diplomas, it might say Bachelor of Linguistics or Associate in Nursing. Like my major was Linguistics, so I focused on English Sociolinguistics and learned skills and knowledge that I could use in a future career. And this is true for all different types of majors. Finance majors learn to analyze budgets and investment strategies. English majors learn to write persuasively and interpret texts. And computer science majors learn to code and use software to solve problems. Ultimately, a major is an investment of our time. And that investment pays off when we level up our abilities by completing different segments that our college sets to guide our major journey. The biggest segment will be the series of courses a department or school lays out for a major so that every student meets more or less the same standards. So students of the same major may take some of the same courses, like an introductory course or a course on a special method used in their field. Business majors may be required to take accounting, chemistry majors may be required to take lab courses, or philosophy majors may be required to take ethics. But there is still some choice involved because many times there are several different paths through a major to reach the ultimate power-up: graduating with your degree. Some major courses may have prerequisites, which is a course you must take before you're allowed to take a more advanced course. It's just like how we usually have to take Algebra 1 before we take Algebra 2. Other major courses are electives, which means students are free to choose from a list when selecting courses. Electives can help students dive deeper into a topic, hone a particular skill, or just explore a new area. For example, our director Nick was a graphic design major but took film courses to round out his education. Electives can also be helpful if a major has the opportunity to choose a concentration, or an even more specialized area of study within a field. One of our editors, Shep, majored in English but concentrated on creative writing. Majors might also have the option of completing a thesis or capstone project. Completing a thesis or a capstone is kind of like a boss battle. It's a challenging research project that serves as the culmination of the degree, usually completed during your final year. So even if they have the same major, not every student will take exactly the same path. It's best for students to talk through their plan for completing the major's requirements with an academic advisor because advisors can explain when certain courses are offered and propose a game plan. Though, you can usually also do your own research by reading about required courses for each major on the department's website. Some even have a major map to help college students see what courses they need to take and when. At this point, the path from introductory classes to more advanced levels probably already sounds like a lot. Fortunately, there are ways to do it.