My Pathway of Figuring Out My Career Goals
By Anna Cihak
Ever since I was about three years old, helping people has always been something that I have had an interest in. When I decided to go to college, I had absolutely no clue what I wanted to do. I had it narrowed down to a few options with something to do with helping others. After trying different majors, I finally decided that psychology and sociology were the best fit for me.
My Journey of Picking Out a Major
My journey of picking a major has taken me my entire life to figure out. After taking classes and applying what I loved to do, it was not that difficult to figure out. One of the biggest things that has come into context when figuring out my major is that when you know, you know. When reading an article about finding the perfect college major, a main point stated “Try to find something you are passionate about” (Vista College, 2021) and I feel like that is exactly what I wanted to do.
Since my mother was a teacher, I always found a deep passion for elementary education. I would help my mom at her school during my open hours and I taught a second-grade Sunday school class for my church which I loved doing even though it required a lot of time and effort. Even though I loved it, I felt like it was an incredibly time-demanding career that did not pay what the worth really was, so I decided it was not for me.
My second option for a college major was nursing, specifically an OB-GYN. A big reason why I wanted to do this was because it would make me a lot of money and it was in the health field. The reason why I chose not to do this was because I did not want to do science or math for the rest of my life and would rather focus on just helping others with overcoming problems.
My last two interests for majors were psychology and sociology. In high school, I had an amazing teacher by the name of Dr. Kotschevar that taught both sociology and college psychology who created my love for understanding human behavior. I also had dealt with a variety of mental illnesses and wanted to fully understand the behavior behind these. These two majors have a good mixture of understanding human behavior and helping others.
Research Classes
When I signed up to become a psychology major, I was more set on becoming a counselor rather than someone that designed research for others. I have noticed that I am better at consuming information rather than the person who makes the information. Researchers have found that after a research class, students seem to be more informed about research classes and the significance of research to psychology (Deem & Lucas, 2006). Taking a research class means that I have been able to study the relevance of research and how to develop my own research which helps me within the psychology field.
During the experiment project I completed for my Psy 211W, Research Methods and Design course, it was fascinating to design an experiment based on a research question. When designing the experiment, we wanted to test our independent variables of visual display and gender in the best possible way. We decided on our design after reading past literature on memory recall. My groupmates and I decided that I would be conducting the experiment and picking the participants for our study. I found this to be extremely exciting because I got to conduct the experiment and record the results. It saddened us all to find no significant differences between our variables, but it was easier to write what we advise for future research and limitations. This whole project gave me an insight into how conducting research is a major part of the psychology field and it turned out to be interesting to do.
Things I wish I knew about the Psychology Major
There are a few things that I wish I knew before going into psychology major. The first thing I wish I knew was that reading, and writing is a massive portion of this major. This took me some getting used to. This about study tactics that work for you, whether it be highlighting notes or rereading the whole article again—these will only help you understand even more. The second thing is that it requires a good amount of critical thinking. If you are uncomfortable with thinking outside the box, this might be a difficult major for you to enjoy. All the information that will be learned in this major will be applied in many other classes so I wish I would’ve paid extra attention to everything.
What is my Plan Now?
I have decided that I will major in both sociology and psychology. As of now, I will attend grad school after my undergraduate either at Mankato or somewhere on the east coast. For graduate school, I am thinking of pursuing either child or sports psychology. Child psychology interests me because I enjoy working with kids and child development is a major factor in people’s lives. Sports psychology has always interested me since I played multiple sports throughout my lifetime, and I am a collegiate athlete.
Picking a major has been a difficult path for me, but with guidance from my peers and teachers, I have been able successfully choose a major that is right for me.
References
https://www.vistacollege.edu/blog/careers/12-ways-know-chose-right-college-major/
Deem, R., & Lucas, L. (2006). Learning about research: Exploring the learning and teaching/research relationship amongst educational practitioners studying in higher education. Teaching in Higher Education, 11(1), 1-18. http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/13562510500400040