By: Asha Tompkins, Community Editor
What’s My Major?
If you’re not sure what major to choose, or you’ve joined a major that sounds good but you can’t choose a specific field of study, then don’t worry: you’re not alone. The Free Press randomly chose a few students to explain what their major is with a time limit of 25 seconds. Their descriptions of why they chose that major might help you decide what career path is best for you.
Taylor Files
Major: Linguistics
Field: Speech and Language Science
“Essentially, it’s speech therapy,” said FIles. “It’s teaching kids how to speak or adults how to speak and swallow and basically everything that has to do with the oral and upper part of your body.”
Files explained that her choice of major was mainly inspired by her mother, who was a special education teacher.
“I’m journeying down the same path she did with just a little bit of variation to it,” Files said.
There are other paths one can take in Linguistics, such as general linguistics, which has no specific concentration, ASL/English interpreting, ASL linguistics, French or Spanish linguistics.
“There’s a lot you can do with it,” said Files. “You could do the speech therapy and sciences side, or you could do actual languages. It’s just a big selection and that’s helpful. There’s many things you can choose within it.”
Kayla Depner
Major: Psychology
Field: Psychodermatology
“My focus is more in the clinical field,” said Depner. “So, disorders and diseases and how they affect people. Right now I’m actually doing a project on the psychological impact of eczema.”
Depner explained that she has an interest in the clinical aspect of psychology because she has always been curious about the psychological impacts of disorders.
“I have eczema myself, so I went through a stage in my life where I thought I had depression. I probably did because eczema is associated with an increase of depression,” Depner said.
She said that when she was feeling depressed, she decided to focus on the psychological impact of it. Depner began researching and found that psychology–the study of the brain and how it affects the physical being–was something that genuinely interested her.
“I mostly wanted to focus on the clinical field and at that point I wanted to focus on depression,” Depner said.
She stated that a student will know their major is the right choice if they’re actively thinking about the major itself.
“If it’s something that’s on your mind a lot and something that you’re really interested in, it’s going to be easier for you to write those hard papers, because you’re actually going to be interested in them,” said Depner. “I would say that life and the experiences you have should lead you in a direction of what major you might take. Then that major should be decided on your interests.”