by: Pranati Swayampakula
Choosing a college major can be incredibly daunting, especially if you have no clue where you think you want to end up. I always thought I wanted to go into the sciences, seeing myself start as a science major, particularly a form of biology, and end in medical school. I saw myself becoming an MD and going off and doing a residency in some super girl-boss specialty, like ortho or neurosurgery. I never thought that I would even consider anything other than biology, but now I’m pretty confident in the fact that I don’t think I’ll ever go to med school. I’m now a psychology major, with plans to get a Master of Public Health and a Psy.D. or a psychology doctorate. It wasn’t an easy decision for me to make or one that I came to lightly.
I’m now secure and satisfied in my career and major choice, but it was a significant challenge to feel that way. It takes a lot of thought and serious conversations with people you trust, but it’s okay. You’re allowed to change your mind. You’re allowed to decide that what you thought you wanted to do isn’t what you actually want to do. You can wake up one morning and decide that you want to do something completely different. I remember waking up one morning and thinking to myself, “is medical school really what you want? Is psychiatry really your preferred field, or do you want to do something different?”
This thought really started a journey through my own decisions and actions that led me to where I was at that moment. I was a hardcore STEM student, taking every science class my school offered and chasing after science classes, soaking up all the knowledge I could. At one point, without me even realizing it, it stopped being something I genuinely enjoyed and became something that I was doing because I didn’t know what else I wanted to do. It doesn’t have to be that way.
That’s the beauty of picking our own education, we don’t have to end up doing what we started out with.