Pick a Major, Any Major...*

Other schools call it ‘undecided’. Valpo calls those students with no definite ideas on their future careers ‘exploratory’. Such a nice little title. Brings to mind images of leisurely spelunking in brightly colored caves, looking at pretty rocks or something. And that was fine, freshman year. Little did I know that this exploration had a deadline, at which point it the lights are suddenly snapped out and it becomes a frantic, screaming search for the right path out. Ha. Well, maybe I over dramatized that a little. But really, with all of my friends discovering their callings in life and snapping up majors two at a time, I don’t know what to do.

I admit, it’s not an entirely hopeless situation. I do have some ideas of what I don’t want to do, so I can pretty much rule out some things, like entire colleges on campus. For instance, if you’ve ever heard me sing the praises of calc, you’d know I don’t want to be an enginerd. And if you’ve ever heard me sing at all, you’d know that I have no aspirations of a vocal performance major. Business is just not for me, and besides, I don’t think I’ve ever set foot in Urschel. I don’t like blood or hearing people in pain so there goes pre-med. I like computers but not enough to be able to converse with others in binary. And from what I’ve seen, nearly every scientific field requires its participants to have a haircut that was laughed at even in the eighties. I just can’t win.

So, what about these individualized majors I’ve heard about? Are they just an urban legend? I heard about some guy who had an individualized major in- get this- creativity. What is that about, and how can I get in on it? I mean, picking an aspect of your personality to major in sounds like a pretty sweet deal to me. “Yes, I graduated with honors with a major in sarcasm with a double minor in extroversion and spontaneity.” Super. I hear they are hiring those sarcasm majors right out of undergraduate school. They’re second only to creativity majors.

In a perfect world, I could major in espionage with minors in pyrotechnics and handwriting analysis. No one would question me or look at me strangely when I told them this. They do now. Just trust me on that. In that perfect world, they’d only smile knowingly and perhaps ask if my concentration was international or domestic. Maybe I should rethink that. You can’t just go around telling people you’re a future spy. You never know who is going to major in evil with a specialization in evil nemesis-ness.

But if this ‘perfect’ world was really perfect, I suppose there would be no evil, thus creating a viscous circle which brings to mind my severe dislike of philosophy and the reason that major has been discarded. So for now lets just say my cover-up (wink, wink) major is biology. Strictly on the DL, of course. So I’m off to get my declaration of major form signed by the bio department. Plus, I have a haircut appointment at Cost Cutters. A good spy knows how to blend.

*This article is being posted under the assumption that I cannot receive any more crap about it than I already have.