What to do When You Don’t Know What to do
Meagan Vicens
Everybody else: “So, what do you want to major in?”
Me: “Grandma, girl, I don’t know.”
Everybody else: “Well, what do you want to do after college?”
Me: “Yeah, still don’t know…”
I can promise you the conversation above is one that I’ve had more than the number of my fingers and toes combined. Yup, more than 20 times.
As an incoming freshman and all throughout high school, my interests in what I liked to do varied. I was a well-rounded student and didn’t excel in one area over the other. I played sports and participated in musicals. I thought science was okay, same with English. History, though, that I could do without.
In my experience, I was never guided to one academic or job path. No one major or career stood out to me as my own. My mom made me take an accounting class in high school, and I didn’t have the heart to tell her I wasn’t going to be an accountant until years later.
It’s okay not to know. It may not feel okay in the moment, but colleges and universities have undecided majors for a reason. Especially at a large university, like the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, the opportunities to explore different majors is incredibly inclusive and encouraged to do so.
If you’re an incoming freshman in the Division of General Studies or if you’re just unsure of the major choice you decided, I recommend living at the dorm, Weston Exploration, to discover all of the different majors on campus.
As a previous DGS student myself living in Weston, I took a class in the basement of the dorm during my first semester. This class was taught by a DGS academic counselor and was a seminar focused on helping students discover what major or majors would fit them best. In this class, I finally felt like I had the guidance I never had in high school. On top of the seminar, students are required to fill a number of general education courses (gen eds). If you’re still undecided, gen eds are the second best way to branch out and take a course that tickles your brain.
You have the freedom in college to choose with no one else deciding for you. It’s also completely okay if your first choice was wrong and your second choice. Before declaring advertising as my major, I was thinking about majoring in food science and human nutrition, then advertising, then sociology, then advertising again, and back to human nutrition. I had thought about what I wanted to major in for so long that my brain was fried. I didn’t give up, though, and in all honesty, after that much thinking, you have to rely on your gut instinct. My gut told me advertising was the major for me, and I haven’t looked back since.
Now, once declared, I hate to break it to you, but the questions don’t stop coming. The number one question that everyone asks an ad major is “What is advertising?”
I'll admit, I haven't gotten tired of being asked this question yet, but it’s not so simple to explain. This is because advertising is so unique to its field in the way we attack problems and dig out solutions. To keep it as simple as possible, I’ll answer, “Advertising is anything that brings a brand to life.”