by John Maxwell

Created on: September 13, 2009

It's very common for people to end up in a career unrelated to their major in college. In fact, the average person changes jobs six times over the course of their career.

Given this, there are two things you should keep in mind. First, a lot of the value of a college degree is in signalling intelligence and ability to do hard work. So even if you're totally unsure on what to major in, majoring in something at random is probably better than not going to college at all.

Second of all, simply guessing what you want to major in based on intuitive appeal isn't necessarily going to work. It's much better to have actual experience with the subject matter to base your decision on. This will dramatically increase the odds that the subject you choose to major in will end up being something you find interesting.

If you're clueless about what to major in, I recommend that you informally tell yourself that you're majoring in choosing a major. Community colleges are great for folks with the "choosing a major" major, since you can take a wide variety of classes with actual professors for relatively little money. They can be a great way to finish a few years of college on the cheap before transferring to a university to finish your degree.

So now you're either going to community college, where you're stated major doesn't matter, or you're going to a university with an undeclared major or a university that's nice and will let you change your major whenever you want. Now what?

I've got two strategies: one for the *really* clueless folks and one for the semi-clueless folks.

For the really clueless folks, I recommend that you make a map of every class your college offers, with arrows pointing from each class to the classes it depends on. For example, at my college you would have an arrow pointing from English 1B to English 1A, since you're not allowed to take English 1B unless you've got English 1A.

Then look at the map you've made and find the really long chains. For example, at my college, Organic Chemistry 12C requires Organic Chemistry 12B requires Organic Chemistry 12A requires Chemistry 1C requires Chemistry 1B requires Chemistry 1A requires Introduction to Chemistry.

Then for each really long chain, take the class at the very beginning of the chain to figure out whether it's the sort of thing you're interested in.

The advantage of this approach is that it gives you a nice cross-section of what your college has to offer while allowing you to keep your options open. You really don't want to find out half way through college that you love something that requires an 8-course chain.

Be sure to use sites like ratemyprofessors.com to take these classes with teachers who genuinely enjoy the subject matter. Taking a class with a teacher who's bored could be even worse than not taking it at all.

For the semi-clueless people, I recommend making a list of 5-10 subject you *might* major in. Then for each of those subjects, try to find a class that you can use for your GE that will also give you an introduction to the subject. Again, be careful to choose only teachers who are interesting. Otherwise this method will work in reverse, and instead of discovering that one of these subjects is more interesting than you realized, you'll discover that all of the subjects are *more boring* than you realize.

Good luck!

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