What should you major in?

A common misconception about majors is that you should be good at the thing you’re majoring in. Admittedly, that would be ideal—majoring in something that is naturally easy for you would be great for your social life, your confidence (no demoralizing reliance on “the curve”), your GPA…

But in reality there are not many people in this world built like Einstein or Beethoven or Shakespeare—so-called geniuses naturally good at one thing. Especially if that one thing is something that has a reputation for being hard.

I’m an applied math major. I am not good at math. I happen to be rather good at time management, which is not the same thing as having a deep intuitive understanding of the subject. I’m no Newton or Laplace or Ramanujan, and I know it. This might be a stretch, but I think most people are non-geniuses like me, people who won’t ever find the one subject they happen to be marvelous in.

So how do you choose a major? The obvious answer is to look at Forbes’ top 10 paying majors and choose the easiest-sounding one. But I remain an idealist: we come to college to learn something that we can’t learn on our own (I mean, presumably that’s where the tuition money is going, right?) Majoring in something just because it’s easy sounds like a cop-out to me—maybe a way to have a bomb social life, but not a way to become academically fulfilled. In my experience at my pretty good university, college students spend most of their time studying anyway. Might as well not waste that time studying something just because it’s not hard.

Anyway, here’s the textbook thesis of the post: a major should be something that you choose not because you’re good at it, but because you can still at least halfway enjoy it when you’re bad at it.

Maybe you’re lucky and the thing that happens to bring you joy is also easy for you. But I wasn’t and was deeply disturbed by the fact that I didn’t have a natural so-called passion or calling. I chose math somewhat arbitrarily, because I had given up on chemistry after discovering that lab work absolutely sucked. To my surprise, I found that I actually enjoyed talking to the wacky, insanely smart professors in the department. And I don’t mind spending all my time trying to understand some random proof.

As insurance for the future, I’ll add that we’ll see how I feel about math after I’ve struggled through Partial Differential Equations (oh GOD). But for now, I’m satisfied with my decision.

Here’s a checklist:

HOW TO KNOW IF YOU HAVE SELECTED THE CORRECT MAJOR

1. You failed a test and instead of freaking out and crying (as you did for the chemistry test) you went to office hours because, damn it, you need to know how you got that problem wrong.


2. Office hours: you think the professors are the bomb, even if/especially if nobody else seems to like them. You go to office hours. The professor knows your face.


3. You spend three to four hours getting tutored by the grad TA and instead of feeling empty and tired at the end, the fact that you finally finished the problem set makes you want to run up the top of a hill and sing.


4. You start making up dumb inside jokes about your major and get sad when none of your friends understand/care.


5. You can name at least three famous people in the field who are still alive (bonus points if one of them has taught you)


6. Thinking about what you used to want to major in makes you want to laugh.


7. Plan your future classes on a spreadsheet or something. The face you make is not a grimace.