Whether you’re a bright-eyed freshman, have switched your major three times so far this semester, or you’re a junior and somehow still not quite sure what you want to study, let me assure you that the major you pick will impact your entire life in a pretty big way. Freshmen especially, listen up: your major also plays a big part in who your friends will be, what your college experience will feel like, and how other students perceive you. Will it matter after you graduate in terms of getting jobs? Not one bit. But it will affect your social life, which is the most important part of college, obviously.
Your major is also extremely important because if you’re gonna be hungover in your 8am, you might as well enjoy the other 200 people in the lecture and have some interest in the class material you’re so desperately trying to retain. For those of us not sitting in that lecture hall (we stop making that mistake after one semester), and eager freshmen alike, here’s what your major says about you.
Accounting And/Or Finance
I hooked up with a guy with this major who freaked out at me when I asked what made his major so hard. Apparently asking him how entering numbers into a spreadsheet qualified as a legitimate course of study wasn’t the most supportive thing to do in that moment, but whatever.
If you’re majoring in Accounting or Finance, you’re probably super ambitious and a douchebag on the side. Honestly, I don’t doubt you’re better at money management than me, so please hit me up if you want to teach me how to save money or if you know what the f*ck a 401(k) is.
Looking into the future, you’re probably super pumped for the Wall Street summer internship your sister’s boyfriend promised to score for you, but spoiler alert: you’re really doing coffee runs and won’t see any daylight, so have fun with that, sweetheart! You’re likely planning on being the betchy version of Jordan Belfort (you know, without all those legal issues and hopefully no quaaludes) but in reality, you’re looking at a sh*t ton of time spent networking with your dad’s friends.
Basically, if you’re delving into a business school major, be prepared to both work and schmooze your ass off each year to get ahead of the rest of your class. Unless of course, you quit after freshman year to become a comm major. No shade.
Economics
It’s bizarre to me that econ majors and business majors have beef. Guess what? You’re all smart, you’re all annoying as hell, and you’re all equally as likely to either fail miserably or become the next Bill Gates!! You watch Bloomberg and read The Wall Street Journal while scrolling through that weird stock app I can’t delete from my iPhone. Obviously, you can also recite the entirety of The Big Short from memory.
I wouldn’t call myself an econ expert, so I’m not really positive how people actually apply their economics degree post-grad. You’re probably planning on going to even more school and becoming a professor or one of those try-hard ~cool~ high school econ teachers or something.
Political Science
Due to the interesting state of America today, these students are multiplying overnight. Poli-sci students tend to fall on opposite ends of the ideological spectrum. Whether sporting MAGA hats with no shame or constantly skipping classes to protest whatever dumb sh*t came out of the White House this week, poli-sci wins as the most entertaining spectator sport.
If you have absolutely zero chill, did Speech and Debate in high school, and enjoy starting sh*t with your friends, this is the perfect major for you! You get a thrill from causing fights after four vodka sodas, especially when the bartender tries charging you $9 for the fifth. Just remember, “God Brad, don’t you realize you’re contributing to capitalist oppression!?” isn’t as good of an argument as you think when you’re slurring your words… especially when the bartender’s name is actually Ryan.
If this is your major, you’re probably planning on going to law school and becoming the next Liz Warren or RBG (good luck). Just remember, we can’t all be Elle Woods, but it doesn’t hurt to try.
Communication
Comm classes are the 21st century version of Noah’s f*cking Ark. Seriously, where else can you find a clueless fifth-year senior, a hungover VSCO girl, and a future Pulitzer Prize winner learning the same thing?
If you’re a comm major, you’re either constantly asking your friend which filter matches your Insta feed aesthetic or talking about the depressing state of journalism today. Comm majors are constantly posting on social media, remain the go-to friend for caption ideas, and daydream of comparisons to Walter Cronkite as you host your own MSNBC (or Fox News) show.
In any case, your parents are paying a sh*t-ton for you to spend four years lazily plagiarizing Wikipedia articles about famous journalists to graduate with a fairly limited amount of hard skills. Congrats.
Philosophy
If you’re uptight, a stoner, and have a bit of a superiority complex, philosophy is the perfect major for you.
When you come home for the holidays and your family asks about school, some of them shake their heads in disappointment, some of them have no further questions, and there’s a good chance your uncle will start an argument with you about Descartes’ theory of the self.
I’m minoring in philosophy and TBH I’m not even really sure what else there is to do with a philosophy degree aside from becoming a professor or marrying rich.
Theatre
literally no one:
musical theater kids: https://t.co/PwPukUbzt5
— sadie (@sadieoleary) November 27, 2018
These are the students you hear belting everything from Phantom of the Opera to Wicked to Mean Girls in the communal bathroom. Theatre kids are basically real-life versions of the cast of Glee (during those awkward seasons that followed them to college).
If you’re overdramatic, kind of narcissistic, and not completely tone-deaf, a theatre major will feel like home. You probably continued taking dance classes and doing community theatre loooong after your friends outgrew their second-grade tutus.
When you aren’t loudly singing in your dorm during midterms (please quiet the f*ck down, practice rooms exist for a reason), you’re inviting your entire Facebook friends list to the event for your upcoming class performance of Guys and Dolls. You’ll most likely move to New York or LA after graduation and spend the foreseeable future in endless auditions. Good luck with that—the whole world’s your stage, betch!
Engineering/Architecture
I know, I know, these majors are actually really different, but they both, like, do math and build a lot of stuff so they’re grouped together in my mind.
The only real interaction I’ve had with an architecture student is the time I wasn’t watching where I was walking and almost knocked their model building over. Architecture and engineering both seem really challenging, and since I’ve never met either type of student, I can only assume they spend even more time studying than pre-med students.
If you’re studying one of these subjects, you probably played with Legos until you were 17 and did really well in subjects like geometry and physics. Since so much of your time is spent studying and building stuff, you’d better hope you can at least tolerate your classmates. From what I’ve heard, engineering and architecture students “like, basically live in lab/studio,” so you have to be cool with becoming a hermit.
Everything I know about architecture is based on Ted Mosby (so I wouldn’t exactly call myself the most credible source on this one), but maybe you’re aspiring to design a skyscraper in NYC one day! We love #betchesinSTEM.
Pre-Med
While this isn’t technically an actual major, it might as well be. I’m not quite sure what pre-med students even learn about or how they do it, but anyone who has enough motivation to make it through a semester (or two) of organic chem is a better person than me.
You probably picked your major after binging Grey’s Anatomy for the first time. If you’re in pre-med, you have to be very patient (lol). You can expect to spend countless hours in labs and in the library. When you finally surface from the black hole of studying to go out, you’ll get stuck with whoever ends up puking, because “med school.” Your friends will probably treat you like f*cking WebMD any time they have a weird sneezing fit and tell you vivid details of alllll of their symptoms when they think they have a UTI.
Pre-med students should look forward to pretty much spending the rest of their young lives in school and residencies before finally starting to make enough money to pull themselves out of student debt.
Nursing
If you’re just as smart as your pre-med friends (but with more people skills) and aren’t into the idea of a decade of school and a ton of student debt, you should consider nursing! You get to take a bunch of science classes, learn all about medicines and the minor difference between them, and in my experience, nurses are a hell of a lot more fun to be around and they get cooler scrubs. Then when you graduate, you get to do a bunch of the same stuff doctors do, only you get way less credit, are paid less, and treated worse! Exciting!
Psychology
Spoiler Alert: Getting a 5 on your AP psych class does NOT mean you’ll automatically be good at college psych, trust me.
If you’re majoring in psychology, you’re probably not into letting your friend use Mercury in Retrograde as a reason to justify hooking up with their ex. It’s more likely that you’ll end up psychoanalyzing how their repressed experiences cause low self-esteem (which is such a buzzkill).
While some people who graduate with a psych major end up doing something totally unrelated, a lot of psych majors are truly doing the Lord’s work and making bank for it. Who else is willing to listen to the problems of bougie millennials and suburban moms whose kids have left for college?
Education
What’s good, future Ms. Frizzle? Education majors often get a bad rap, but we all know that teaching is literally one of the most important professions ever.
Education programs are home to washed-up camp counselors, patient saints, and future trophy wives alike. If you can tolerate anyone from children to pretentious sorority girls, like coloring, and basically own stock in Michael’s and OfficeMax for all the money you spend on school supplies, this is the field for you.
Who knows, you might go on to be a kick-ass teacher and change some lives, Dead Poets Society style. If so, try reeeeally hard not to be one of those assholes who takes a full school year to grade papers because if it’s not abundantly clear by the 15 emails you’ve gotten asking for an update, students hate that sh*t.
There are literally hundreds of majors (and minors) you can choose to study, and this list just scratches the surface. If you’ve somehow gone through the whole course catalog and still don’t vibe with any of the options, your next steps will probably be to either create an individualized major or re-evaluate if college is actually right for you.
No matter what you decide to do with the next four-plus years of your youth, be prepared to spend at least half of that time pushing your body to its absolute limits in every way: hygiene (yes bitch, you do smell after spending three straight nights in the library), coffee intake (“is six espresso shots too many? I have a final tomorrow”), and stress levels, because you’re in for a wild ride. Good luck.
Images: kaboompics/Pixabay; off campus / Instagram (2); sadieoleary / Twitter
