changing your major

[spacefem]

I've been posting some career-type videos on tiktok and a college student asked if she should change her major to engineering. she'd been thinking about it, I'm singing the praises of engineering, is it worth a CHANGE?

of course I said yes, because I'm trying to recruit.

just kidding... I followed on. i mean it's true that I am love my job, and I'm really happy I majored in engineering, but I know another fact: it doesn't matter. if you're a college student standing at the crossroads between slightly different science majors, pick one. use a dartboard. stop worrying.

I worried too much! Decision making is scary when you're young. the world scares us into thinking we're going to make a bad choice and screw up our whole lives. my anxiety started when i was like 16 and went until... well all the rest of the ages, to be honest.

I'm in my 40s and wish I'd gotten an airframe mechanic's license instead of a pilot's license. In my 30s I wished I'd gotten an MBA instead of an engineering masters. In my 20s I wondered if I should have studied computer science instead of engineering.

at least now I notice my PATTERN so I expect it, and I have mentors to shake me and say "STOP. bring what you have to the table. other people will bring other things to the table."

I'm an aircraft systems technical support manager. I didn't even know this was a job! there are a million paths that could have brought me here... electrical engineering happened to be my starting point. there are a million places I could have gone from that starting point. everybody drifts around and does things related or unrelated to their college major.

my advice to young people now is take a deep breath, and be your awesome self. work hard. get your hands dirty. drift around like the feather in forrest gump. you will be okay.

Comments

[lantairvlea]

I started out with an AAS in Equine Science and a BFA in Art Education, this last year I taught a miniature cow how to drive and launched my first course on an online platform related to driving horses. Life takes us very interesting places and there is no one way to get there!

[adafrog]

:)

[adore]

Decision making is scary when you're young. the world scares us into thinking we're going to make a bad choice and screw up our whole lives.

I'm still angry at my parents and teachers for actively telling me that my whole life hung on the balance in high school. They lived through that life phase and surely knew better. I landed up with stress-induced digestive disorder because I was lied to. Telling young people that they have time to figure things out and that their mistakes won't haunt them for life, would do them a world of good. It's what they need to hear and it's also the truth.

[fbhjr]

I agree, what you’re good at is much more important than a piece of paper saying what you studied.

[dandylover1]

Besides, if it doesn't work out, you could always take more courses and do something else, or just take them for personal knowledge. Nothing is written in stone. The problem is that too many people see university as a path to a job and not as a place of learning.

[ironphoenix]

The college major helps get you into those first opportunities, I think, but they don't define the path. I was a radio-frequency and electromagnetics guy in university, but have evolved towards much lower-frequency mixed-signal work, even though I'm still in electronics design. It's working out ok.