How to Choose a Major in College

When I received an invitational latter to Join College, I could not hide the excitement and joy I felt. The course subjects indicated on the latter, Sociology and literature were all from my favorites subjects in high grade level. However my excitement was converted into sleepless nights immediately after joining when the career dean informed me that I should choose one major subject between sociology and literature. How can I choose a major? This was the most nut cracking statement that lingered my head for almost one week.

After a serous reevaluation and consultation, I came across Professor Randall .S Hansen's article 'Choosing a college Major: How to Chart your Ideal paths' in quintessential careers that I found not only educative but changed my cognitive process into having a career that I have enjoyed all through. According to Randall, my most stressing moment is an important process in choosing a major. You need to first think about it before you do anything. The first stop of your journey should be your personal excitements in terms of what careers excite you when you think of them or when you see someone doing them. In my case I used to enjoy seeing some form of creative writings in magazines, I enjoy performing art and many literature works.

In support to Randall's first stop journey hypothesis, Dalia Wheat Colon in St.Petersburg times, reports that, evaluate yourself on the high school subject that used to excite you and the assignments that interest you. In my case, I used to be exited with literature in high school and formed part of my interests. Even though I passed highly in social studies more than literature, it gave me least enjoyment.

The second stop over hypothesis by Randall I found fruitful to my sleepless nights was self evaluation on my abilities, strength, weakness and skills I posses. This requires a comprehensive reevaluation process as from the childhood experiences to the current. His guide is based on an individual looking at the talents you have that can help you pass leisure time. Do those talents and skills have any thing to do with the subject under scrutiny? For instance between Sociology and literature, I had to find out between the two, where my talents are based. Since high school, I was participating in Drama and dance. My qualification for national competition indicated to me that I had some talent in narratives, acting and dancing. Even though sociology has some few topics on society and art, almost all course units in literature was based on art and creativity involved. Literature had scored the next point.

The third stop over hypothesis involves looking at what you value at your expected career. This involves the way your career will make you help the society, the pressures you are able to accommodate at a place of work and how to have a positive impact on others. From the evaluation of literature and sociology I was unable to tell since my acquired knowledge on careers in both fields was not fully developed. But for a person who wants to develop his or her future career you need to have this in place.

The fourth stop over hypothesis is career exploration. This involves acquiring all literature information concerning the career you want to have in future. I had to take an extra step of gathering relevant information concerning both sociology and literature. In this exploration process, you need to look at the challenges and strengths facing the indented career.

The firth stop over hypothesis I found helpful in Randall's work was reality check. Before choosing your major you need to be realistic with what you want do to. More a times parents give their children pressures of doing what to them they feel is right without evaluating their children's weaknesses and strengths. To them what they feel is good in the market is what they always subject their children in doing it. In my case my mother who is a sociologist advocated for sociology when I called her for advice. By visiting Randall's work I was able to come up with a realistic count based on my personal evaluation.

The last step in Randall's stop over hypothesis is to narrow your choice and come up final answer of what you want to do in life. After all the evaluations I chose to take Literature as my major. In conclusion, before you chose you're major at any place, do a comprehensive evaluation and reevaluation.