How I decide to change my major or not
By Kaya Dulik UA’27 and Jim Stellar
I (KD) am a sophomore who came back to her freshman seminar professor (JS) to discuss what I should study now, starting as a Criminal Justice major, but maybe also interested in business. I still struggle finding something because I keep creating doubts and I feel like I’m not sure anything interests me. So I am starting this conversation off just really confused about what to do. Hopefully with the help of my professor I can discover more possible careers and guidance of what to do next.
I am not just her professor. She “hired” me (no salary) to be her mentor.
What does that mean? First we are establishing a trust-based relationship despite all that separates us such as age, gender, field of interest. Then, we intend to use that relationship to explore the heart-head reasons for choosing her next step. This work is really her job, but by talking to me (JS), she might get some insights into what she is thinking.
Why wouldn’t she know this already? The answer is that some of the computations that go into the emotional part of a decision are done in her limbic system. This information is then communicated to her cognitive system in the neocortex so she can talk about it, but limbic processing is not the same as cognitive processing. Consider what would happen if KD were given a recipe for blueberry pie from her mother. She would know from the start exactly how to make it. But everyone also knows that after she made 20 pies, she would be better at it. She would have the feel of making that pie as well as the recipe. All of this thinking is summed up by a quote from the philosopher-mathematician, Blaze Pascal, from the 1600s, who said “The heart has reasons of which reason does not know.” It is relevant today to this classical student decision issue.
From my perspective, this conversation helps. First, it is a relief to know that figuring out what I want to do (emphasis on the word “want”) is something that requires my gut feelings that may not be so clearly communicated to the planning part of me. That it is brain-based and natural and imperfect is nice. I’ve never really felt smart ever since the 5th grade and I did badly on my regents exam and my old teacher told me her disappointment ever since then it feels like it’s gone downhill. So when my mentor told me that he thought I was smart I didn’t really believe him because I’m still not sure why he thinks that, but I figured to still give it a chance and maybe I will see for myself that I can be smart.
We mentors are never supposed to lie and I did not. But I did use my superpower in this relationship. KD was trained (as was I) not to brag about herself and that can easily turn into self-doubt (it did for me). But my superpower here is that I am not her. So I can simply call it as I see it. As I said in other writings, the famous writer, Oscar Wilde, once said “A cynic is someone who knows the price of everything and the value of nothing.” To me, KD has a quality of insight that suggests that she knows both price and value in the topics we discuss.
I am the first in my family to go to college. I had an older brother but he did not go to college for a few years after graduating high school. I went right on. This gave me a sense of stress to do well in school. I did OK in my first year, but it could be better. I have always been interested in my major of criminal justice and enjoy those classes and now a bit less so in business. The problem is to see what I want to do after I graduate even though I am a sophomore. Last summer I worked a typical high school type job to make a little money. This coming summer, I am hoping to work with my mentor to get a job that is more related to the criminal justice field.
This is the perfect job for a mentor working with a student in whose “heart-head” interaction I believe. What KD needs, I think, is the felt knowledge of a job that could maybe be what she would eventually do after graduation. If we can get her that experience and then reflect on it, she could develop more certainty about a hypothetical career that could be reflected in her courses in her junior and senior years.
I am excited I am terrified that I won’t find anything I like or I like and then I won’t anymore. I also feel a sense of urgency to find something I like because almost everyone at least seems to have a plan and I don’t. Which is frustrating because I hate not knowing or not being able to even try to plan my life and already makes me feel behind.
Not knowing is normal. What one cannot do, and KD will do this, is to give up. So how do we take steps as mentee and mentor to make this next phase happen? Typically, we talk and find some possibilities for a plan, perhaps for a summer job. Then in our honest conversation, KD expresses her interests and reservations and we figure out what experience to chase first. After something happens, we get back together to reflect on it as experience is the best teacher. Then there is the next step because next year KD will be a junior next year with many more steps to go.
I am finally happy because I’ve curated a list of options that I want for as a career. I found what pulls me and inspires me and that’s helping people in tough situations because I know how that feels to be put in a hopeless place and I want to give the support I got and what I would’ve wanted. This is something emotional for me and a waste of my experience if I don’t try to make things better and something I would never lose interest in. Some options for me are victims advocate, FBI, domestic violence advocate, social work and insurance fraud investigator.
Now that is progress. Stay tuned for our next blog where we see how this story continues to work out.
