There are so many things that I don’t understand about the way that people think and handle issues in our generation.
However, one big thing that I don’t understand about our generation is when college kids like us continue to stay in a major that they are absolutely miserable in, especially when they make other people around them miserable because of it.
My point here is that you should change your major the moment that you lose passion for it or the moment that the stresses of it are changing you for the worse, even if it means that you have to finish an extra year of school. I originally wanted to be a middle school English teacher because I loved to write and I had a lot of empathy for students who were experiencing such an awkward phase of life. However, once I got into the classroom and realized that the kids saw me as more of a friend than an authority figure, I slowly started to realize that teaching was not for me. I knew that I didn’t have what it took to control a classroom or get kids to look past seeing me as the “cool student teacher.”
Changing my silly personality around children in order to become a better teacher also wouldn’t have felt right either. I am not minimizing teaching or classroom management here, but disciplining children that are not my own is very risky and difficult for me, and that is a weakness of mine that I have learned to accept. I love kids and they love me, but I just can’t get them to take me seriously—except for when I have kids of my own someday.
If you have to change who you are just to be good at a job, then that should be a clear sign that your current position is not for you. People need to have a job where they can be their “whole and real self.” Not only will staying in the same miserable major make you miserable and cause you to put unneeded pressure on yourself, but your attitude is going to cause you to shut down and affect others around you, too.
People are going to get tired of hearing you complain about something that you can easily change or if they see you stay in your major just to prove yourself to people who don’t matter. It is better to go just one extra year or semester after you change your major than to spend 20 years or more in that prison of a job that you will resent for the rest of your life. Even though I lost my passion for teaching, I still never lost my passion for writing and now that I am a journalism major, I am happy to say that I am now in a major that I love and can work with what I am best at.
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