When I initially enrolled in college, I had my major and even my minor planned out. I was going to be a nursing major with a Spanish minor. I then became a psychology major with a Spanish minor. When I would tell people about my minor at family events, they would assure me that I was on the path to financial security.
“That’s great,” they said. “That will look good on your resume and make you more marketable on this terrible job market.” It was drilled into my head that my minor was just as important as my major. A few years later, I become a communication major considering a minor in crisis preparedness.
The idea about my major and minor stuck with me until my close friends started graduating in December 2014. They began complaining about how they could not find jobs in their fields. They also felt like declaring a minor and taking classes in that field had been a huge waste of time.
The “my minor isn’t doing anything for me” speech was the most recurring and the scariest. It challenged one of the ideals that I had held onto since my senior year of high school. We all know college can be expensive, and for someone to spend thousands of dollars on something that was supposed to add value to their degree and end up feeling like it was a waste of time, was a wake-up call. I began questioning whether or not my minor truly mattered. If I would graduate feeling jaded because my minor was “doing nothing for me.” If I would end up feeling like I wasted my time like a few of my friends did.
I did a little analysis of the conversations that I had with my friends and realized that most of the people that were unhappy with their minor choice were unhappy because they chose a minor that had little or nothing to do with what they wanted to do with their degree. One of my friends who majored in communication decided to get a minor in biology–of course a biology minor might not help you find a job at a non-profit firm in their marketing and public relations department. They might have better luck had they majored in communication and then minored in marketing or journalism. However another friend who was a finance major with an accounting minor said that she thought her minor contributed greatly to receiving the great job as a financial analyst that she has now.
These conversations gave me a lot to think about. A few friends attempted to convince me that declaring a minor was a waste of time based on their experiences. However,
I am a communication major and I plan to minor in crisis preparedness. I hope that this will look good on my resume since I want to be a publicist. I hope that the crisis preparedness minor will show that I am prepared for whatever may come my way at my dream job. I firmly believe that my major, minor, and experience will lead to my success.
Remember hard work (and a great minor) will take you far.
