15 Signs You May Have Picked the Wrong Major (or Career)
Date Posted: April 15th, 2009
1. You picked your major (or career) because you “know” you won’t hate it 20 years from now
Believe it or not, this seemed like a good reason when I was a senior in high school. I figured it was better to pick something I didn’t hate than something I enjoyed doing because the pressure of trying to make a living out of thing I loved doing would squeeze the joy out of it.
Of course that was the wrong paradigm. It’s much more effective to find a mission that inspires you and then find a major or career that enables you to do that work.
2. You have the same major (or career) as one of your parents
My dad is an electrical engineer.
Mind you this doens’t mean that following your parents is definitey a bad thing, it just means you ought to check that this is indeed the right decision for you instead of the default or something you were pressured into.
I never felt particularly pressured into being an engineer, but when I did decide that that’s where I was headed my family encouraged me to do EE instead of computer science. I went along with it because of the next sign:
3. You picked your major (or career) because you wouldn’t have the motivation to teach it to yourself
I don’t know how common it is for people to pick a major for this reason, but I’ll list it because it’s what I did. I could easily envision my future self learning about computer science, philosophy, psychology, music, and history among other things on her own, but EE not so much. That’s what college was for. It never crossed my mind that if I didn’t have the motivation to teach myself the material I might not have the motivation to use the material either. Alas.
Honestly if you picked your major with this in mind, it might not actually be a problem. If you have an incredibly motivating reason to learn a subject you’re not interested in, that reason alone may be enough to power you through the learning process. For instance reading incredibly dry, boring, badly written musicology books is possible for me since I’m fairly strongly interested in Early Music. But I didn’t have a truly motivating reason to do EE.
4. You spend a lot of time doing escape activities in order to avoid classwork (or work projects)
I’ve spent way too many hours of the last 6 years playing Solitaire, reading feeds, and talking to people online in order to avoid doing classwork. My justification was that none of these activities take very long to do individually. A game of solitaire lasts only a few minutes. Reading LJ post takes only a few seconds. Refreshing LJ takes less time than that. But of course I don’t read one post or play one game of solitaire. 
Later on I decided to make my escape activities things that were actually worthwhile, like reading personal development books and working on this blog. These made me feel better, and I actually had something to show for my not-work time, but ultimately they were still escape activities. They also had the side-effect of making me really feel like I shouldn’t stick with my major.
It goes without saying that if you’re doing something you value you don’t tend to feel the need to do escape activities.
5. Your default emotions when you think about your major (or career) are guilt or disgust
Guilt for not doing enough to secure your success.
Disgust if you do end up spending a lot of your time on it.
6. You don’t have much interest in befriending your classmates
The idea here is that if you really enjoy what you’re doing, you’d presumably want to spend time with people who also enjoy doing those things. If you like yourself then you probably like other people like you.
During the second half of college I became less and less interested in befriending other Michigan engineers. Instead I spent a lot of time with swing dancers and SCA people. For some reason being around people whose life revolved around engineering no longer felt good to me.
Granted I know plenty of people who love what they do but don’t have much interest having their social circle include their co-workers or classmates. For the people I know, though, it isn’t that they’re opposed to spending time with people in their field it’s that there needs to be another point of intersection. A doctor I know, for instance, tends to spend his spare time with the SCA, geek community most of which aren’t doctors. He does have friends that are doctors, but as a general rule the ones he’s closest to are also geeks.
7. You don’t look forward to going to school (or work) after a break
When I was younger I used to believe that it was normal to dread going back to your regular life after a wonderful vacation. Now I know that it’s a sign that normal life isn’t compelling enough.
8. You sincerely believe you have better projects to work on than classwork (or job-work)
I have this feeling often. Blogging has the potential to be more useful. Reading good books feels more useful. Developing my leadership skills through my clubs also feels more useful. Unfortunately one can’t get student loans or scholarships for such things. (At least not that I know of.)
Ideally you should feel that doing well in school (or at your job) is a good way to spend your time. If it isn’t, something’s wrong.
9. You don’t retain most of the material you’re taught in your classes (or you forget things you’re supposed to have learned on the job)
In the classes I’m sincerely interested in I tend to retain the material. I remember quite a bit of the material from my computer science classes, for instance. When it comes to EE, however, no matter how many times I see the material it never sticks. I can do it for a little while and then I forget. And it’s not that I’m incapable of learning the material, it’s that I don’t really want to learn it.
This is definitely an omnious sign, since one presumably doesn’t want to be spending years and years relearning the same material.
10. You rarely, if ever, experience a state of flow when working on classwork (or work projects), nor do you want to.
By flow I mean the experience in which you’re working on something (problem set, project, etc.) and time seems to slow down, you find that you’re incredibly productive, and you feel euphoric. I’ve had this feeling while writing posts, programming, practicing music, and a few others things. I’ve even had it while working on engineering stuff from time to time.
If you’ve never had this experience while doing your work that might be a sign that something’s wrong, but a more telling question to ask is “Do I want to experience flow while working on my major (or career)?” And when I think about engineering I know that I don’t actually want to experience it. That’s a problem.
Why wouldn’t someone want to experience flow? Methinks that’s a post in and of itself. A short answer is that when you experience flow while doing something that means that that something is an important part of your life. If you really don’t want something to be important you don’t want to experience flow while doing it.
11. The work you look forward to is brainless busy work
In ever career and every major there will be some parts that are just busy work: filling out spread sheets, easy problems, easy assignments, etc. After doing some difficult tasks it can feel good to do a few easy things, but it’s really not a good sign if you would always rather have the easy task instead of the hard task. It means you don’t want to think, which means you aren’t really doing what you want to do.
12. Acquiring a Significant Other totally messes up your motivation
I had a boyfriend in high school and was arguably more obsessed with him than I ever have been of Aaron, and yet my high school sweetheart never negatively affected my studies. Aaron did. Looking back, the core reason for this is quite simple: I no longer believed in the sanctity of my work. If I had actually believed that what I was doing was important and a good use of my time, having a boyfriend would have ultimately enhanced my studies not made permanent damage to them.
13. The idea of spending 8 hours a day 5 days a week doing work related to your major fills you with dread. (The idea of working in this field for another 10 years fills you with dread.)
Methinks this is pretty self explanatory.
14. You compulsively [insert feel-good action of choice here] to medicate yourself
I compulsively eat chocolate, but it could be anything. World of Warcraft, TV, sex, potatoe chips, whatever. If you’re doing some quick-fix feel good activity to help you make it through the day with a little more comfort, something’s not right.
If you start calling it your medication…
When you’re feeling good about your work the need to medicate yourself decreases. You get enough good feelings from the work itself.
15. The thought of speaking to your professors (boss) fills you with shame
Why shame? Because you know you aren’t living up to your potential. You’re afraid of letting your professor or boss down. If you’re experiencing this often then you definitely ought to rethink your major or your career. If you can’t bring yourself to take the actions necessary to overcome your shame you’re in the wrong place.
There are many more signs, of course, but these 15 really hit home for me. I think if I’d read this list three years ago I might have done something about it earlier. Such is life. Hopefully you won’t make my mistake. 
