Follow your passion
Part of the joy of post-secondary education is finding out what you do well. Sometime it’s a rocky road, and sometimes you need to make big changes, sacrifices, and overhauls. Choosing a major to stick with is an important decision to make, and needs to be a well-informed one. Fortunately, there are a number of resources open to those who need to make this change, and it’s perfectly natural to want to change your course of study. So don’t freak out. It happens to all of us! And who knows? You may even discover something you never even realized you were great at.
The first thing to accept is that it is not a sign of weakness, failure, or anything. It’s a sign, if anything, that university is a time and place to challenge yourself and see what you are capable of. Don’t feel like you must be locked into one field of study for your four years at Guelph – there is a plethora of possibilities at your fingertips, and diversifying your education can only make it stronger.
Some students go through major changes more than once. I spoke to fourth-year Wildlife Biology and Conservation student Kathryn Tisshaw, who went through a number of major changes. However, what she had lost in a more “clear-cut” direction, she had gained in diversifying her studies for the better.
“My major went from a BSc. in Psychology, to Wildlife Biology, then from Marine Biology to Wildlife Biology again, and now I’m in Wildlife Biology and Conservation […] It was a good learning experience because being in science allowed me to choose a specific major tailored to my interests. A lot of other schools don’t have integrative biology majors and science students just major in “biology.” I found it a lot easier to change majors than I thought it would be, which contributed to why I changed so much. I didn’t even have to choose the new major before picking courses because all the courses were already open to me.”
Since many science courses, especially, are so diverse and sometimes overlap with each other, it can be even beneficial to change your major a few times. For you arts majors, “intersectionality” is an important current in critical studies, so having a background in a variety of disciplines can certainly aid your approach to the humanities in a time where one approach can’t explain everything. These are but a few examples of where your decision to change can take you.
My situation is similar. After doing a year at Carleton University in the Film Studies program, I decided to leave and, in time, come to Guelph to major in English. The gained knowledge of cinema has certainly helped my studies in literature, and I believe it was worth my time even though no film degree came out of it. Education is never a waste of time or money.
The first step is to speak to your academic advisors. You can do this by talking to your degree advisor (at the B.A. and B.Sc. counseling offices in the Mackinnon Building, for example) and then your program advisor, usually a faculty member from the major’s respective school. These advisors can help you investigate your options by providing the answers to the questions you need to know regarding your program of choice. After weighing your options, it would help to get some more in-depth input from a professor in the field you are considering. Ask questions to find out more information such as, “Where can this take me?” “What kinds of jobs are in this field?” “Would it be worth it to minor in this field?” The answers you receive may surprise you.