LEANN BURKE / THE DEPAUW
As the deadline approaches for sophomores to declare a major, some students have known exactly what they wanted for a while, while others struggle.
“I considered everything [before I chose Psychology as my major], I’ve taken a lot of different classes all the way from Calculus, Biology, English Writing, but I think I just enjoyed the Psych classes the most so far,” said sophomore Emily Bell.
The Registrar’s office expects to have all of the sophomore’s majors declared by Monday March 2, but there isn’t exactly a consequence if some sophomores take longer than that to declare.
“We used to not do much about it [when students didn’t declare their majors on time], but we may put a registration hold that just says you can’t enroll in classes before you declare a major,” said Registrar Ken Kirkpatrick. “Some majors are a little late, like the Music [school students], they have to wait until after they finish their sophomore recitals before they know if they’re going to be the B.A. [Bachelor of Arts] or B.M.A. [Bachelor of Musical Arts].”
Besides declaring a major, sophomores also have to find an advisor and have them sign off on their major before they turn in their declaration to the Registrar’s office.
“The biggest problem students run into is that they have to ask someone to be their advisor and some of them make a bigger deal of that than others,” Kirkpatrick said. “Sometimes they will come to our office and ask, ‘who’s a good advisor?’ I don’t think many students are undecided this late, they have usually made up their mind before this.”
However some students know exactly who they want to select as their advisor.
“For my Bio advisor, I chose Dana Dudle. She was my Conservation Biology professor and I loved her so much. She’s very bubbly and I felt she was very competent,” said junior Biology major Gabrielle Duong. “A lot of the professors are really great. I know there are several Biology and Psychology professors who I would love to have as my advisor but I can only choose one.”
Some students like so many different classes in different areas of study that it’s hard to pick just one major.
“We all are coming here for the same reason; we want a well-rounded education, so we take all these different classes and we like a lot of different classes so we’re not sure what ones we want to major in because we have a lot of good faculty and the classes are great,” Bell said.
Anxiety about choosing a major, and hence a career path also crosses students’ minds quite often, especially when adults are constantly asking questions such as, “what are you going to do with that degree?”
“I think some people have difficulties choosing a major because they feel like what they major in will determine what they will do for the rest of their life and there’s just a lot of pressure on them,” said junior Gabrielle Duong.
“I really enjoyed my introduction psych class and then I went on to take another one, Social Psychology, and my professor Susan Biehle was phenomenal and I could really see myself liking the major. I’m not exactly sure what I want to do, definitely Psychology is on my mind, but I think it’s just a good avenue towards other things such as Law School, Business, really anything.” Emily Bell
Then there are those students who have always known what they wanted to do and happened to discover a new passion once they came to college.
“I always knew that I wanted to be a Biology major because I’ve liked science ever since middle school. I decided to add a psychology major though because I really liked my Introduction to Psych class,” said junior Gabrielle Duong.