Most students don’t enter college knowing what they want to do for the rest of their lives.  Instead, they’re there to explore and discover a path for their future.  Unfortunately, too many students make mistakes when they are choosing their majors, because they’re just not sure what to choose.  Michael J. Leonard of Penn State University recently wrote an article to help students through a minefield of bad decisions when choosing their majors.

Leonard says that there are five myths that consistently trip students up, year after year, when it comes time to make decisions about majors.  In Leonard’s article, entitled “Some Common Myths about Choosing a Major,”  Leonard gives some good practical advice to avoid wasting time and money so students can move smoothly forward to graduation.  Here’s a nutshell explanation of Leonard’s good advice:

•    Taking classes in a  major to find out if you like it or not may be a waste of time. Introductory classes won’t give you a real feeling of  the major, and sometimes you have to already be declared in order to take the classes, anyway.  A better idea is to attend a few classes as an observer, get your hands on a syllabus, and then go to the bookstore and spend a good bit of time looking through the textbooks.

•    Getting your Gen Ed classes out of the way before choosing a major may do more harm than good, according to Leonard.  You may unwisely choose the wrong Gen Ed classes, because not all Gen Ed classes apply to all majors.  Leonard counsels students to seek the advice of an academic counselor, who can guide you so you don’t waste valuable credit hours taking the wrong classes.

•    Too many students choose a major thinking that their major will become their career.  Leonard says that is one of the worst misconceptions, because “choosing one doesn’t automatically mean you’ve chosen the other.”  Leonard goes on to give examples of students majoring in one thing, but then actually forging a career in an entirely different field.  People who get degrees in “theater, anthropology, and history,” says Leonard, “may all be able to find jobs in business, human resources, teaching, the military, and a variety of other occupations.”

•    Choosing a major doesn’t mean that’s all you have to study.  There are a wide variety of programs to help students follow more than one study path, including declared minors, double majors, and even specialized degrees that incorporate several areas of study in one degree.  Penn State has a liberal arts degree that is called the Letters, Arts, and Sciences Degree.  Don’t forget that people who go on to get graduate degrees often choose a completely different field, like doctors who go on to get MBAs.

•    Leonard really wants students to keep in mind that choosing a particular major isn’t an indicator of the career that they will have for the rest of their lives.  He says that ten years after graduation, most people are working in fields that “aren’t directly related to their undergraduate majors.”  Besides, Leonard emphasizes that most degree programs are focused on career planning that includes the “development of general, transferable skills,” that easily move from one field to another.

Choosing a major needn’t be a gut-wrenching experience.  By following Leonard’s sensible advice, and remembering that the purpose of a college education is to develop skills that can move from one field to another, students can do away with unnecessary anxiety when it comes to choosing their majors.  Remember to have fun and choose course work that inspires you to learn; you’ll be a better student as a result of it.