As the fall semester kicks off with brand new students, one of the most common feelings among freshman is the pressure to know exactly what you are doing when you get to college. Social and financial pressures, as well as the general anxiety from the new change in life, can make you feel that you need to have your education and career goals mapped out perfectly.
With that in mind, it is important to remind these new students to take the time they need to figure things out and give them room to do that.
One of the biggest contributors to this fear is financial pressure. College is not cheap. Most students must pay thousands of dollars out of pocket or take out that money in loans to pay for tuition and other costs. When you are paying so much for schooling it can feel like a huge waste of money to switch majors. The best thing to remember as a freshman is that the first semester or two of college will mostly be filled with general studies.
If you decide that switching majors or classes is what’s best for you, you have a couple semesters before it starts costing you time and money.
On top of that there is often social pressure to not change paths or to make sure you choose the right path. It’s often considered shameful to not pick a major right away or switch to a different one. People also tend to judge if you don’t know exactly what you want to do with the major you’ve chosen.
Every major has different paths you can go down and careers that are available to them. There are no wrong or right majors to choose from.
Understanding that most people end up changing their paths one way or another in college is so important. Most freshmen enter college when they are still teenagers, so their personality, values and goals are going to naturally change over time.
If you are feeling anxious about your choices or feel about changing your goals or path, understand that this is completely normal for most people and that a lot of people will understand this and help you transition between the paths you choose.
Give yourself grace and do what’s best for you and your goals. If you stay in something just out of fear to change it, you might end up regretting it more than if you just changed it.
Hilary Valdez can be reached at [email protected].