Letting Friends Pick Your Major

The worst mistake I made was near the end of the first year, when we had to decide what to specialize in for the rest of our time in University. First year, most people do almost the same set of introductory courses, whether they're going into the Sciences or into the Arts or the Humanities. It's in the second year that you really set your direction, and that's where I went horribly wrong.

It was close to the end of term, and Finals were coming on. All through the year, I had been studying with a group of friends I'd made in September. We'd all been doing well, and getting good marks. We had various ways of studying together: everyone would review some different parts of the work, and then write questions on it or set problems for the others to do. We found studying together made us much better at deciding what was most important and therefore most likely to be on the exam -- after Midterms in November and March, and a set of Finals in December, we'd already had plenty of practice. We were much better at doing it together than any of us would be by ourselves. We all trusted each other and liked each other, and working together like this made working for the Finals so much more interesting and less stressful. Our minds were full of all this, and signing up for the following year didn't seem much more than an annoying distraction.

Actually, for the others, there wasn't all that much of a decision to be made. Some had long ago decided on Math, Physics, and computers. Others were more into Biology because that was where their main interest had always been. But me: I'd never really known. With all that was going on that first year, I never seemed to get the chance to think about it much, or discuss it with an academic counsellor or anyone else. So it was natural for me to just go along with the flow, and sign up for the same things that my friends did.

Second year was a lot more specialized. The assumption was that everyone's future would be in the labs or in the subjects that the various Profs were teaching. It didn't take me more than a couple of weeks to realize that this was not what I want to do with the rest of my life. Now I remembered one of the things that had made the previous year so enjoyable. We always ended up knowing all the same things, and we all got good marks, but in the less sciency courses, like psych, I was the one who took the lead in our studies together. But in the ones like Chem and Math, it was always someone else, and I was a follower. Odd that I hadn't really ever thought about that before; instead of thinking about anything like that, it was easier just to go with the flow and enjoy working together.

I went to see if I could change my program, but it was already beyond the deadline. As well, all the courses I wanted were full. So I was stuck with the ones I was doing. Even though most of us in last year's group were still working together on most things, the magic had really gone out of it for me. Of course, the others saw that, especially because now I was always a follower, never the leader. I didn't feel I was pulling my weight any more. I wasn't enjoying the work itself either. Everything seemed uphill, and extremely boring. As a result, my marks have already gone down a bit, and it will be a major task for me to keep them at least respectable at Christmas.

Now, in November of my second year, I absolutely wish that I'd thought about some of these things before. Underneath, I'd known all these things all along. But I'd avoided thinking about them because it was hard and unpleasant: much easier just to avoid it and leave things as they had been. I've looked into changing some courses next semester; some things I can, others I can't. The counsellor pointed out to me that in my new program, although my courses would all count, I'd have to do at least one extra one to fulfill all the specialist requirements for my new Major.

I'm sure I'll be able to work it out, but I'm not sure how. In the meantime, I'm stuck with a whole bunch of classes that are useless to me, and boring too. At least I can see my way ahead now, though. But it would have been a lot better if I'd thought about it earlier.