I'm 25 and *still* can't pick a major

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1

I just started going back to my community college. I had credits from high school that transferred over and have completed one semester since then. After I finish this semester, I will need five more classes to get my AA.

The problem is I still have no direction or idea of what I want to major in. Throughout high school I planned to major in English. Then senior year I developed severe writing anxiety that derailed that. I’ve taken tons of psych classes, so I was going to just do that and then maybe try to be a child occupational therapist or something (my kid brother goes to OT and I think I would like it), but the actual coursework is so fucking boring. I don’t think I can do another 2 years of these classes. I’ve heard psychology is a terrible major for getting a job anyway.

What I really want to do is something like graphic design or animation, but looking at entry requirements at different schools, it looks like I would have to do an extra two years of Intro to Design type courses even after I transfer. Meaning I’m looking at another four years for a bachelors instead of two.

I am interested in Biology, but have only taken one science course since high school. To switch to a science major I would again have to commit to a lot more time in college to catch up on coursework. Same with business. I have considered it because it’s so general and yet seems to lead to real jobs, but you have to satisfy so many prereqs to even get into a program that I would have to take at least an extra year.

I don’t know. I feel like I’m stuck with getting an AA, transferring somewhere, and getting a BA. Unless I want to spend a lot more time in school, which I would be fine with if it wasn’t so insanely expensive. I look at the list of BA degree options and I’m so…unenthused. None of them seem to lead to good jobs and most of them seem boring. I just don’t know what to do.

2

Well shit, I’m 35 and if I did undergrad over again I still don’t know what I’d pick.

3

Hardest thing for most people to come to terms with is:

Whatever you like at 25, you likely won’t like as much in 10 years.

If you don’t stick to your natural skills, you’ll likely get stuck in a profession that you aren’t gifted at and be destined to a life of mediocrity. Even if the job you start with you like (initially), eventually you may not. This is why it’s valuable to pick a career that pays well enough to have that option later on.

For example: love social work? Teaching? Better FUCKING LOVE IT lest you’ll have a tough time leaving.

My point of view?

You’ve been in school long enough. You will likely never find “your calling” in life without doing it irl first (and even if you did, no job will truly make you happy. It’s all the other stuff that does this). Pick a degree and STICK with it.

How to be happy?

Get a degree and then a job you don’t hate that pays well enough for you to live a good life/doesn’t work you too hard, find a significant other that you LOVE, have hobbies and friends. No job will do this, alone.

How to tell if you don’t hate a field? Study the material. If it gets boring after an hour, it’s not for you.

How to tell if the career works you too hard or doesn’t pay well enough? Glassdoor.

4

You could pick something you are sort of good at and just go with it. I don’t think everyone can have a job that they are passionate about, and that’s okay IMO. Some people live to work, and some work to live.

5

I’m 29 and feel like it’s basically over for me, but at least I don’t have any student loan debt. Wish I had completed my degree anyway though as both myself and my parents invested in it, but I don’t think the prospects of an Anthropology major was worth it so likely would’ve just been sunk cost fallacy. But shit, I had a family friend staying with us when I was in highschool and he was in his 40s and told me he still had no idea what to do with his life. Some people, maybe even most, never find what their calling is and just float along.

6
7

Academia isn’t for everyone

8

You’ve got to find what you’re passionate about, or at least like doing. Just listen to your heart and ignore all of the other noise.

Then find a way to make that talent/ interest profitable. Or see if there’s a cross between what’s gonna make you money and what makes you happy.

9

I’m going to be 27 this December and graduated a year ago with a BS in Animal Science. My plan was to go to vet school but after working at my hospital for 3 years, I realized that it isn’t the life I want for myself. So just like you, I don’t know what I should major in. I loved reading, writing, and drawing as a kid, but my parents would always tell me it doesn’t pay. I just want a decent paying job that allows me to take care of myself and won’t mentally tax me like my current job does. (I work as a veterinary hospital assistant.)

But I also want to do something meaningful. A degree might take an extra 4 years to acquire but there’s no better time to do it than now. I don’t know what life has in store for me. But I know that life will only move forward when I begin to take action.

So I intend to pick something that interests me the most, do my research and do that. I had no debt from school, but going back to school, no doubt I now will. But I hope that if I do something I feel confident I can do, that perhaps opportunities will light the way.

I hope that we can both make up our minds and find a sense of direction.

10

If you’re open to a slightly different path, I would suggest switching to an outcome-driven method, i.e. picking a job first & then letting that pick the major. Here are the basic steps I recommend to do that:

  1. Finances
  2. Fulfillment
  3. Selection
  4. Training
  5. Advancement

Finances:

Money is the engine that runs your life. There are two focuses available:

  1. Pride
  2. Security

There is a difference between these, and it’s important to clarify them. If your sole focus in your career is to chase money & be stuck-up about it, then you’re leaving a lot of amazing opportunities on the table. Talking about money is a bit taboo in our culture, but the problem is that it determines so many things:

  1. How hard you have to work
  2. How many hours you have to work
  3. How much free time you have available
  4. Your stress levels
  5. How often you can go on vacation, and when & where you go
  6. Being able to have good healthcare
  7. Being able to afford good food
  8. Being able to have access to resources like a car & a home
  9. Being able to have a reliable car, or a step further, a car that you personally want
  10. Being able to live in a safe neighborhood
  11. Being able to enjoy luxuries in life, like a late-model smartphone, modern computer, etc.

In America, no one is holding a gun to your head. You can work as much or as little as you want. You can stay at home on the couch all day or you can become a billionaire. The mint literally prints more money every day, and we’re constantly short by an average of over 6 million jobs every month. There are 14,000 unique jobs available. TL;DR there is a lot of opportunity out there!

I recommend defining your financial requirements first, because for most people, being able to afford a lifestyle they’re comfortable with long-term is a really big deal. This means doing some homework & some honest introspection to think about what you really want in life & what matters to you. As an adult, no one is going to hold our hand or babysit us into getting the life we desire; only we can define that ourselves as individuals.

If we never put in the effort to defining it, then we risk leaving things up to chance, both in terms of the targets we want to hit & walking the path to hit those targets. This is never really clearly spelled out in high school or college, but it’s a critical step to getting what you want out of life. It boils down to this set of questions:

  1. Are we content to drift through life?
  2. Or do we want more?

There are a lot of things that I would really like to do, but don’t necessarily mesh with the overall picture I’m trying to paint with my life. At one point in high school, I got really into airbrushing & could envision myself on a beach somewhere doing custom airbrushed t-shirts for people. Sadly, this would have made paying for an apartment & gas for my car kind of difficult!

So I consider finances the starting point. Most people are going to work professionally for 40 to 50 years of their life…spending a few weeks thinking about the kind of lifestyle you want to live & then putting a price tag on that can really help change your trajectory!

Fulfillment:

As I’ve talked to more people over the years, I’ve created a basic 4-step fulfillment selector tool to determine where you want to get your fulfillment in life from:

  1. From work
  2. From outside of work (ex. side gigs, hobbies, vacations, free-time activities, etc.)
  3. From both work & outside of work
  4. From neither of those (i.e. some people are simply unfulfilled)

There is no wrong answer here; only what you choose. I have friends who have life-callings for jobs. I have friends who work to pay for their fun-time stuff. Personally I like to get my fulfillment from my job & from what I do outside of work. I also have some friends who are just not happy no matter what happens.

So the first step is to design your lifestyle & price that out to determine what kind of paycheck you’ll need to get long-term, and the second step is to clarify & define where you want to get your fulfillment from.

Selection:

There are a lot of jobs out there, and there are many that could be personally fulfillment & meet your financial needs. I would suggest reading this post here to kind of get in the right frame of mind about how there is no “perfect job” out there for anyone:

It’s more about attitude than anything, but enjoyment does play a large factor, especially if you’re the type of person who wants to get fulfillment from your career. So having a good attitude & finding something you like to do every day is kind of a killer combination, because if you have a garbage attitude about your job, then you’ll never be happy no matter what wonderful options life brings your way.

I literally know people making millions of dollars who dread going to work every day. You only get one shot at life & people who are wealthy eventually learn that while it can make unhappiness more tolerable, it doesn’t completely eliminate it. Finding a job that you enjoy doing, especially one that helps to exercise your personal talents & interests, and also contributes to the world in a way that you find meaningful, is pretty huge in my book!

One of the problems with the way our society functions in terms of education is that we get really wrapped up with the whole “follow your dreams” thing & getting lost in the motion of classes & registration & majors & all of the camouflaged that goes with pursing a higher education. For me, switching to an outcome-driven focus really helped clarify my path forward in life.

I had a string of mediocre & crappy jobs in high school & college, and even between good jobs after getting into the full-time workforce. But it wasn’t really until I went through the process myself of defining what I wanted out of life that I really started to hone in on things that I could enjoy doing day after day & that also met my pre-defined needs financially, job-wise, fulfillment-wise, etc.

Again, no one ever really talks to kids about this stuff to this degree of detail & simplicity. It’s not hard, but if you never ask the questions, then you never get the answers, and then it feels like a really hard task & it can be difficult to ever really figure out what we really want in our jobs & in our lives!

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11

I’m 49 and I just picked my major last year.

12

maybe just pick something and also make sure you explore things outside of school, do volunteer work or whatever, college isn’t the only path

13

I’ve heard psychology is a terrible major for getting a job anyway.

I can attest to this. Unless you go to grad school a BS/BA won’t get you better than what you could get at Walmart stocking shelves. Bartenders make more.

14

Maybe look into double majoring? Or a minor? This way you have more than one option? Looking back I wish I had spent more time taking other classes and double majored. I’m in my early 30’s and I’m switching career fields, going into health, I’ll be in school for the next 6yrs.

15

I feel you tbh, i hate to make it about me but honestly we have similar paths. I went to a CC out of high school. Took me 4 years to get my associates (I went to school part time for a while) i used to think i wanted to do nursing and now I’m 24 and still barely know what i want. I’m about to graduate with a degree in public health which I don’t like AT ALL, because i couldn’t decide if i wanted to do nursing or not. I decided ima try physical therapy even because i have to take only 3-4 prereqs to get into a program at some schools i like, and working for a university or professional team would be cool.

But honestly bro/sis, shit is going to be expensive regardless of the path you choose, financial aid been giving me less money each year for taking so long so I’ve had to do student loans. I ABSOLUTELY HATE school too but here i am still. From what i read it seems you REALLY like graphic design so i say go for it. People always say “be practical” “how is x going to get you a real job or money” but honestly these are the same mfs who are miserable af because they have a job they don’t really like. I say chose it fast, you’re not much older than i am but my motivation for this major I’m about to graduate it really be dwindling so I’d choose something you’re actually interested in so you don’t fail badly or stress yourself out trying to do work you don’t enjoy. Because i be wishing i chose exercise science for a bachelors right now instead of public health.

16

The fact that you don’t know what you want is irrelevant to your age. Distance yourself from age guilt first

17

I read somewhere that only 20% of people have a calling and a dream job. I’m 28 and still don’t know wtf I want to do and I already have a bachelors. I considered going to grad school, but like you I would have to take 1-2 years worth of courses before actually starting the program. For your situation I would say go ahead and get an AA first and buy yourself sometime to think about a BA/BS.

18

You know, I decided to “choose” my passion in college and told myself to stick through with it. I started at CC too, and worked my way towards graduate school. It was a very long, arduous, journey.

I don’t want to give too much information about myself away, but I’ve been having these panicked realizations about my career path, even before the pandemic. If you checked out my resume and understood what jobs I’ve done, you might say that I’m psyching myself out saying I love my career (I do, but don’t. I’m in love with the theories and applying them, but not the actual work or most jobs available) and then turning around to follow passions that maybe don’t have much to do with it. The bottom line is that I chose “early” but even years later I realized I didn’t reflect hard enough on the things that actually mattered, and made it a point to follow a passion that still results in me questioning things about myself. And while I say this, the rest of my answer goes a bit back and forth because there are no right and wrong choices, but you should be able to back your decision up if/when you fall into the doubting doldrums.

Indecision held me back at a lot of crossroads. You have to dive in and take chances because the time you spend pondering the what-ifs take away from the experiences of learning what makes you, you, by trying them out.

There’s no race to finish school. But this, from a 1st-gen college kid who had to work throughout school. Financial aid will last only so long, if you receive it, but you also don’t want to be the person returning for another degree, and then to come back to school a couple years later because that didn’t work out either. You lose out on time, opportunities, growth, and lifetime earnings falling into that cycle.

Explore your options, strengths, and passions. Take a lot of career/personality tests-- they mostly align with the feeling of a psych reading that they’re quite vague and don’t help point out what’s good for you, but they help you with an outer perspective of what might work for you. Maybe ask a friend to help pinpoint your strengths and weaknesses. Narrow down some areas, and figure out what you like doing to ask the right questions. Is there a possible career? What do these kinds of jobs look like? What’s the possibility/probability of me landing the cool job, and what do I have to do to get there? Don’t be afraid to ask others for help too, but be kind and gracious when you do.

Plan out a few things: take some of the classes that you enjoy, try to see what careers they offer, and plan for accountable actions in following through with them (for example: get a cert in something like project management if feasible, associate’s in some skill, and graduate with some arts major and tech minor–whatever you’re able to balance!). Science classes are dedication, but so are design. Make sure your actions are deliberate, and that you do your best–you never know if you will need a project or a grade for street cred with a potential opportunity. It’s happened for me throughout jobs and school. Don’t be afraid to spend more money on yourself, but make it a deliberate expenditure that the particular lesson is worth the money you’ll be learning from (and some, while we see them as mistakes, are very valuable lessons in the form of large payments).

You don’t have to do a whole laundry list of things but make sure you enjoy the journey because you are investing in yourself. Life will likely disregard your plans but if you’re prepared with other planned action, you’ll have better recoveries when flash storms come around. Learn how to meditate too.

I hope you find the resolution you are seeking.

19

your college degree is about you getting a job you can do something you like later but for now focus on the majors that will be relevant and useful years in the future.

Engineering or computer science or physics would be by recommendations.

20

Same situation! 24 and almost done with CC debating to get my batchelors (design) or not