Series: Why I chose my major
Deciding what you want to study in college seems like a pretty daunting task. What I mean to say is, you're choosing what you're going to be doing for the rest of your life. But no pressure.
In terms of ease, making this choice is different for everyone; for some it takes two seconds to answer and for others it takes two years. Peoples motivation factors are different due to our interests or aspirations; is monetary gain more important or is vacation leave more important?
Personally, I started off wanting to do mechanical engineering with an emphasis on aerospace engineering. This was in eighth grade though, and throwing a cool-sounding word like "aerospace" to a bunch of 13-year-olds is a sure-fire way to get them interested. So I had set my eyes on UAF since the get-go, as it is one of the top engineering schools in the Western United States and has low tuition costs to boot.
But the summer before my senior year, my interests changed dramatically. I took second place in a state-wide Russian-speaking competition in Anchorage and went to Russia for a month to study Russian. I went back to school for my final year before college and had a revelation: I don't enjoy math nor science. That was like the mid-life crisis of high school. It took a whole of two minutes of freaking out to realize that I liked Russian. After a quick check to verify the existence of a Russian program here at UAF, I was back to "normality" and psyched to get up here for school.
As I was applying for classes for my first semester here, I had the crazy idea to go a bit language-crazy; and that I did. My freshman year consisted of 14 credits in language: Russian 201, French 101 and Spanish 101, along with the continuation courses in the spring semester. The soupe du jour was alphabet soup, and the letters were over-running the bowl. It was chaos up there (in my head), but strangely, a nice, organized chaos. My second year consisted of the continuation classes (though, slightly modified, as you may notice) with Russian 301, French 301, Spanish 201 and German 101 (just for kicks and giggles). It was during this semester that I changed my major from originally being a Russian Studies major to being a Foreign Languages major with a concentration in French.
There was something different about French. Perhaps the allure that was present for Russian left and was replaced by one for French (though, I had been to Russia twice before attending UAF). To keep with the idea of traveling like I had done before university, I decided to take some time on exchange to work on my French. Thus, the impending fate of a year abroad was looming over my head; I was on track to go to Switzerland.
In terms of ease, making this choice is different for everyone; for some it takes two seconds to answer and for others it takes two years. Peoples motivation factors are different due to our interests or aspirations; is monetary gain more important or is vacation leave more important?
Personally, I started off wanting to do mechanical engineering with an emphasis on aerospace engineering. This was in eighth grade though, and throwing a cool-sounding word like "aerospace" to a bunch of 13-year-olds is a sure-fire way to get them interested. So I had set my eyes on UAF since the get-go, as it is one of the top engineering schools in the Western United States and has low tuition costs to boot.
But the summer before my senior year, my interests changed dramatically. I took second place in a state-wide Russian-speaking competition in Anchorage and went to Russia for a month to study Russian. I went back to school for my final year before college and had a revelation: I don't enjoy math nor science. That was like the mid-life crisis of high school. It took a whole of two minutes of freaking out to realize that I liked Russian. After a quick check to verify the existence of a Russian program here at UAF, I was back to "normality" and psyched to get up here for school.
As I was applying for classes for my first semester here, I had the crazy idea to go a bit language-crazy; and that I did. My freshman year consisted of 14 credits in language: Russian 201, French 101 and Spanish 101, along with the continuation courses in the spring semester. The soupe du jour was alphabet soup, and the letters were over-running the bowl. It was chaos up there (in my head), but strangely, a nice, organized chaos. My second year consisted of the continuation classes (though, slightly modified, as you may notice) with Russian 301, French 301, Spanish 201 and German 101 (just for kicks and giggles). It was during this semester that I changed my major from originally being a Russian Studies major to being a Foreign Languages major with a concentration in French.
There was something different about French. Perhaps the allure that was present for Russian left and was replaced by one for French (though, I had been to Russia twice before attending UAF). To keep with the idea of traveling like I had done before university, I decided to take some time on exchange to work on my French. Thus, the impending fate of a year abroad was looming over my head; I was on track to go to Switzerland.
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