It’s Normal to be Undecided
I am halfway through my junior year of high school, and with junior year comes the start of the college process. It is the start of thinking about what one wants to do, where they want to study, and what college would be the best fit for them.
Going to college symbolizes the end of adolescence, and the beginning of the future as an adult. College is the first time for kids to be on their own and start planning for the rest of their lives.
As a junior, I have not yet applied to one college. I have not yet declared a major. I haven’t written my college essay. I don’t even have a first choice school yet. I just received my tentative list from the college office, yet, the number one question that I have been bombarded with for the past year has been, “What are you going to major in?” and “Do you know what you want to do when you’re older?”
When I am asked this question, my answer is “I have no idea” or “I am planning to go to college undecided.” I get stressed because these kinds of questions make me feel like I already have to know exactly what I want to do with the rest of my life.
As a 16 year old, it should not be expected to know what you want to do. At 16, it is just not possible to have had enough experience and exposure to the world. Being in high school and taking the five core classes and electives is not enough experience to have a career path already figured out at such an early age. Yes, if someone has a specific passion from an early age and they already know that would be their dream job, that is a different story, but for the rest of us, how can we know already what we want to do? We are young, and still figuring out life and how to navigate through high school. This is just the beginning, and it’s too early to have already mapped out a destination.
I think declaring a major at 18 in the US is too early, but for most students in Europe, children need to have a pretty definitive idea of what they want to study in middle school. In high school, they start studying and honing their skills in that area. By the time applying to colleges rolls around, students must show on their applications a certain interest. Doing extracurricular activities related to their intended area of study is crucial to get into college. I think this is a very interesting approach. Personally, I don’t really understand how one could decide their future at such a young age. People change so much as they grow up, and committing to something when you don’t know the half of what is out there doesn’t give children a chance to explore their full potential.
To further explore this idea, I talked to a GCS faculty member who grew up in Europe. She explained that when she looks back on her college process, choosing a major as a junior in high school was too early. She said that it was too early to be completely sure about what exactly she wanted to do as a career. At the time when she was deciding her major, she said she underestimated how much weight this choice would carry. She also felt like this choice wasn’t even made entirely by her. She was influenced by teachers and parents to choose a science major, only because science and math majors are seen as more respectable compared to English majors. In the end, she changed her major from biology to English, because that was truly the right career for her all along. This was an interesting conversation, and it showed me that even someone who grew up in the European education system is critical of the process of forcing students to choose a major so early.
College is a place to find yourself. It is a place to figure out what you like and don’t like, and try out things you have never done before. College is a place to make mistakes and be indecisive. It’s a place to embrace new things and be okay with not having a set plan. Being confined to the restraints of a random major that one was pressured to choose is not helpful. Discovering oneself and being happy is. Being undecided is totally okay, in fact, it’s more than normal.