Xatal

No matter what you choose as a major, be aware that your life’s goals can change very fast, and it’s best to pick a college with enough choices to accommodate that.

Unfortunately, I have a recent story that goes with this.

For the longest time, I couldn’t decide if I wanted to be an economics major or an engineering major. When I applied to UC Santa Cruz, I noticed they didn’t have the engineering fields I was most interested in (structural, civil, and/or aerospace), so I just put down economics.

Ever since I chose to go there, I have been pretty happy with economics and haven’t really thought of switching. I knew my heart wasn’t dead-set on it, but for the time being it sounded good.

Fast-forward to yesterday. I’m watching some video on YouTube about roller coasters, and it occurs to me how cool it would be to design them. I’ve only been interested in engineering when it comes to stuff that I’m especially fond of (planes, bridges, buildings, etc), and since I have a love for roller coasters, I realized just how much of an awesome job that would be for me.

Seriously, how cool would it be to engineer one of these?!

So I hop on Google and search for “Roller coaster engineers”, where I find that there are generally three types of engineering degrees that are used in the process: mechanical, structural, and electrical. I already knew Santa Cruz didn’t offer structural, but I figured there was a good shot of it offering mechanical. I went to the UCSC majors page to look to see if it was there, and…

Son of a…

Nope. UCSC offers electrical engineering, but that’s not really appealing to me, not even where it would come into play with roller coaster design. Mechanical and structural were what I was after.

In fact, the more I looked at the other engineering majors offered by Santa Cruz, the more I realized that none of them appealed to me that much. When I had made my choice of universities to go to, I hadn’t paid much attention to backup majors, but now I wish I had: my second-choice of fields isn’t as good as I’d thought. I don’t know if I’ll switch because I am heavily interested in economics, but if I decide I don’t care for it as much as I had thought, I’ll have a much harder time deciding what to do.

Whoops.

The moral of my story here is to always check and see what other majors your school might have.

Unless your heart is completely set — and I mean completely — on what you want to do, take a close look and see if there are other majors you would seriously consider if it turns out your #1 choice isn’t so great after all.

Your plans can change in a heartbeat.