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If you've spent any time in college, you've certainly been asked your major, and sometimes even what you're planning to get out of college. For the longest time, I've debated what I should major in, and even now, I question if my major is truly what I want to do. I'm still a freshman, so if I do decide to change majors, it won't be the end of the world, but I do believe I've made the right decision in terms of longevity, though maybe not the choice I would have made a few years ago.
Math has always been my strong suit. I'm a great test taker, and I do amazingly with objective truths. Math, to me, is easy, since the entire subject essentially bases around the idea of there existing an objectively true answer. Once you know the way there, the answer is often indisputable. Sure, there exists things that get confusing, and especially when you apply math to a science, but math on its own as a stand-alone subject is easy to digest. However, I am not a math major, despite what all my high school teachers believed.
I know I want to be a teacher, that is where my true passion lies. Something about taking a subject someone doesn't understand and being able to get them to understand it in a way that is personalized and makes sense to them is wonderful. I first had that feeling in a math class, funnily enough. I was always the go-to "peer tutor," finishing my work really early and helping the people around me to understand it. If I became a math teacher, it would be the easiest job of my life. Despite that, I chose history as a major instead.
Why history? History has objective truths, sure, but there also exists plenty of ambiguity. What impact does an event from 100 years ago have on modern geopolitics? Was X country justified in its actions? What were the motivations of Y people in Z conflict? There are so many open-ended questions that are potentially unanswerable, which to 17-year-old me was nightmare fuel. Why did I decide to major in history and devote time to wanting to teach it? Well, quite simply, history is far more intriguing to me.
Thinking about what I want to do in life makes me think about the fact that I will be doing it for decades. If I were to spend 40 years talking about something, I'm gonna want to make sure it can retain my interest for 40 years. Math, unfortunately, isn't that for me. It is still interesting and has its merits, and I will always be an honorary STEM girly at heart, but I can't have deep and meaningful conversations about mathematical equations. I can, however, have those conversations surrounding the ethics of a historical conflict, how history impacts modern governments, and how art and music are shaped by the environment in which they were created. I can tell that from now until the day I retire, I will always have more history to learn, or at least be able to re-contextualize events in new ways. Math is the easier subject to teach, but history is where my passion lies.
If you've made it this far into my ramblings, dear reader, tell me what your major is. If you're not in college, whether because you've graduated already or you just haven't gone yet, what subject will you/did you major in? Did you choose your major because it was easy for you, interesting to you, or because the job opportunities paid well? A secret fourth option? I'm eager to hear other people's perspectives on this.
what's your major?: a deep-dive on how i chose mine
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gladis!
I love that you found your passion but unfortunately I'm one of those people who still haven't found theirs. Last year I started university majoring in interior design, after 1 semester and summer courses I quit. Like, literally. I was studying abroad and I quit the university, I quit studying abroad, and I quit interior design. Came back home and decided on animation, I'm starting this october but I have a feeling this is not what I'll be happy with. I fear it will end just like last time. I chose animation bc I'm good at working in my computer, I like to learn different computer programs and find them easy to handle. I know this bc In my early teens I used to make edits in these different editing programs and then for interior design I learned different modeling programs (which were the only fun part about interior design, I hated everything else). I don't know why but I just enjoy those types of programs a lot. I noticed this feeling on myself and thought that animation might be good for me, still I could be so wrong but I want to have hope. I never felt a passion for animating, I mean, I love anime, videogames, and editing, but I never stopped to think that this could be something I want. Until now. I don't think I have a passion for it, I have no idea how it's like and I'll only know once I start classes. I'm anxious bc I really don't want to change majors again, I'm really hoping I made the right decision somehow. If it isn't then I fear there won't be any hope for me left. I might just quit university entirely bc I just can't think of anything else I could study, there is not a single thing that suits me. I thought, I was sure interior design suited me but I was damn wrong. Now I'm in a place were i'm just hoping, hoping luck is on my side and I somehow fall in love with animation out of nowhere and I won't have to change major and embarras myself in the process once again.
Anyway, Sorry for the rant.
forgive me for taking a while to reply, i've been sick the last couple days and could barely pay attention to anything lmao
for what its worth, it took a while for me to even settle on what i wanted. it's different for me, for sure, but i took a "gap year" that ended up lasting 5 years after i graduated. i regret that to this day, but also, i didn't really know what i wanted to do with my life, or even if i was allowed to. my best friend is also a history major and wants to be a history teacher, so i worried that he would think i was just copying him. i also went so long just getting by that i never considered that maybe i wasnt content with a dead end retail job. if i didn't go back to school, i'd honestly probably be a supervisor rn, or at least training for one, but i hated the idea of being stuck like that for the rest of my life. it's part of the reason why i went back to school, i needed to do something, even if it wasn't the "right choice" for me.
a friend of mine once told me that it's better to change your major than to never go at all. i disagreed at first bc i wanted to be 100% sure, but i do think it has merit. if you wait until you're 100% certain on something, you'll never do anything. i've reconsidered my major a lot, since i truly dont know how the rest of my studies will go. anything can change, but honestly, that's just how life is.
anyway, tl;dr, i think it's good that you're even doing anything at all. for your sake, i hope it works out, but if it doesn't, i hope that doesnt discourage you from trying again. you'll find your passion one day, it might just take you a bit. looking at your profile, you're only 18, and i didn't know what i wanted to do until i was 22. you have time. hell, i have classmates, freshman classmates, in their 30s, 40s, even 50s. there's still time to figure yourself out and find out what your passion is.
by ket; ; Report
You are right, thank you. I really hope everything turns out great for the both of us and we'll be okay even if it doesn't turn out like we expect. 💜
by gladis!; ; Report
not_ian
always interesting to see people talk about their passions. i had an history teacher back in high school that was so in love with what she used to teach, that we felt it too during her classes. i developed an admiration for this subject thanks to her, and i can see this love in you, aswell. did you have a specific topic that made you fall in love with history?
as for my major, i am studying Computer Science. since i was a little kid i had it in my mind, as this area is extremely vast, with maany jobs you can pursue. i want to work with programming, as this is the most creative job you can have in tech. think with me, to program is to code an entire universe of possibilities; be it a game with a full story, be it an entire site like spacehey, be what your imagination has to say. all depends on your knowledge and experience, and by your passion you can create a tiny, little cosmos - shaped by your own terms.
oooo, yes, programming is a fun one. i've done a few bits of hobby programming over the years and it's definitely something i can see being a very engaging field to work in. i used to love trying to learn different ways to do something, taking a project i did in ~200 lines and condensing it to ~50, stuff like that was always very fun.
to answer your question, for me it was the cold war era. my focus, since i was in high school, has always been on propaganda and how objectively bad things can be justified with the right charismatic leader at the front of it (which also spawned a very slight interest in how cults form), and the cold war was jam packed with propaganda on both sides. i also love relating my interests into history as well, and for a very long time, i became obsessed with the weird little quirks of soviet television (like how soviet tvs had to be shut off at night or else carried the risk of exploding, which was the result of mail-order tv sets being put together often by just regular people rather than professionals). plus the content itself was interesting, there's a video by Ordinary Things on youtube called How the USSR Collapsed on Soviet TV which was a fascinating perspective to get on the fall of the ussr.
by ket; ; Report
indeed! i feel like programming sometimes is like playing with a jigsaw puzzle, so fun! lololol.
the cold war is such a complex topic, i feel like it is a rabbit-hole by how many sub-topics it has. i know right???? it scares me how the propaganda at the time [and today, too] basically controlled how maaany people thinked, especially during the government of stalin and the soviet union as a whole. [hey, mind expanding more about your research about cults? would be really cool to hear [or read, since we are texting, lol]].
were the TVs in USSR this bad? my God! well, this is something sintomatic of course, but really surprising, i would never know if you didnt tell me. about the video, i wasnt expecting their television to be this weird? i mean, the guy who directed the ads was a bit... experimental. but the way they manipulated the media was very terrifying, and during the incident in Chernobyl, too...
since we are talking about this topic, do you believe that the cold war *really* ended?
by not_ian; ; Report
haha, yeah, the tv's really did have a nasty habit of exploding. on old soviet sign-offs (before 24/7 tv was a thing, tvs would sign off, usually around 10-11pm, then wouldn't come back until morning news at around 5-6am), they would play the national anthem followed by a flashing alert reminding you to shut the tv off.
cults function basically because of propaganda. once you know the signs of a cult, it starts to become... obvious. that's where cults get their power, in the ambiguity. that's why some of the most common cults disguise themselves as religions, with a key difference being that the leader of the religion has an "exalted status" in some way. recruitment also often targets those who are vulnerable. there's a game i played a while ago called sagebrush that talks about it, but for a cult leader, if you see someone who looks down on their luck, maybe in need of a sense of community, that is the perfect person to indoctrinate (ie. "come with me, all you have to do is [seemingly innocuous act, such as donating money, going to church, etc] and you'll be surrounded by a community of like-minded folk and i can help you with your troubles"). then, once someone is in, you convince them that anyone not in the group is antithetical to your beliefs. anyone who disobeys the leader is to be shunned, interacting with the outside world could interfere with your salvation, etc. well known cults in the public eye will try to change their external reputation (think scientology, they get celebrities to endorse them and sway public opinion) so that they can continue to do what they are doing. it's very similar to propaganda that governments do to basically convince citizens that the other people are bad. the in-group/out-group mentality is basically propaganda 101.
as for the cold war ending, on paper, it ended with the fall of the soviet union on christmas 1991. the mentality, however, hasn't been entirely lost. i can speak as a us citizen born over a decade *after* the fall of the ussr, and i was still given propaganda on how russia, china, vietnam, north korea, etc are all horrible places with 0 redeeming qualities and how the us is superior and a bastion of free speech and freedom. obviously, there's nuance to all of this, but addressing the nuance can often make you look "suspicious." i cant speak for any other country, but i have interacted with chinese citizens a little bit on rednote, and they've shared a similar sentiment: that the people of the "other" country are nothing like what the government says they are like. circling back a bit, the feelings of the cold war are definitely still here. as someone with an interest in this stuff, i am acutely aware of the fact that global tensions are very high at the moment. political tensions in the us have been causing division, tensions in europe are alluding to potential nato involvement, ongoing conflict in the middle east is causing global outcry, etc. that being said, it is difficult to get an accurate idea on how close we are to global conflict, since we tend to consume information in a vacuum. the world is huge, and it is very easy to forget that. just because i can see a lot of signs doesn't necessarily mean anything concrete, it just means i know where to look. a lot of these conflicts are seeded in the roots of conflicts from prior centuries. we just have easier access to information now since we have superpowered computers for phones that we carry around 24/7.
tl;dr the modern geopolitical state of the world is complicated and terrifying
by ket; ; Report
i feel bad for those who learned about these TVs the hard way. "oh yeah rasputin, about the television you gave us last week? exploded yesterday, comrade". also, kinda scary was that flashing alert they had.
if i recall correctly, i watched a streamer play this game, the images seem familiar, not to mention the story; well, just put it in my wishlist. now that you mention, it is far too easy to recognize one, which is... weird, to say the least - the way you approach someone and only require a small act, or as you said, an innocuous act, only to get them is so messed up, not to mention the way you manipulate them to believe. this reminds me of the jim jones cult, with how they managed to organize themselves and et cetera. but you actually opened my mind about the strategy scientology uses, by having celebrity-members to sway public opinion. talk about pure propaganda.
now that you mention, i am not an us citizen, but since your country has a HUGE [or massive] impact here in brazil, i can say we were taught the same thing about them, as if they were the main villains of the entire world. due to this, we have been exposed to little to nothing about their culture - just the basics, if that.
oh! by the way, i got another question for you LOLOLOLOL. do you believe countries actively control the social media apps we use? the reason why i question you is due to something i saw on tiktok some time ago; people claimed that the platform was not showing contents about specific, sensible topics that showed bad things the US government did - even if they searched it. but if this is true, isnt it strange? since tiktok is a platform that was made originally in china.
back in the main topic, i have a feeling that the current geopolitical state of the world is like an enigma; so many variables, countries suffering not only externally, but interally too. but MY GOD i have so many questions to ask you, this topic intrigues me and i am eager to learn more about. to not question-bomb you with 392 things, i will refrain myself and only ask this one [hehe]: despite how complicated it is, do you have an opinion on where those conflicts can lead the world? maybe the Third World War, or something even terrifying, such as a nuclear war of some sort? or perhaps you believe something different will take place?
i am really curious to what you have to say!!
by not_ian; ; Report
forgive my potentially lackluster response, i just got home from a whole day of class lmao
with regard to the question on social media, i can't properly answer that without knowing how the algorithms work, which is obviously a very closely guarded trade secret. my best analysis, however, points to some people just... fear mongering. fear gets clicks, unfortunately, so people sensationalize, talk about how "OH MY GOD THE GOVERNMENT IS CENSORING US" regardless of the truth of the matter. that being said, there are definitely some weird things with tiktok. when tiktok went dark in the us for about a day, it was done very weirdly. it blocked access to ANYONE with a us account. this included people who made their account in the us, had moved, and attempted to access it with foreign internet. so basically, two groups were affected by it (those in the us and those who made their accounts in the us), and while most of that overlaps, there was a significant oversight, or rather, it would have been an oversight if it remained that way. less than 24 hours later, tiktok's servers went back online with a message praising trump. i'm saying that objectively, the message clearly put trump on a pedestal and basically thanked him for "saving tiktok"... when he was the one who tried to ban it in the first place back in 2020. the entire thing was clearly a publicity stunt to try to get the people of tiktok who maybe weren't too politically aware to think of trump in a positive light.
following the reinstatement of tiktok servers in the us, the algorithm was kinda, for lack of a better word, fucked. the gap in data made everything wonky in a way that it never truly recovered from. some took this as an indicator of "things having changed" behind the scenes, but realistically, that wasn't the case. the things people point to are often with the search system being "censored", but the search system has always been kinda fucked (as someone who has been actively using the app since 2018). i think there's definitely an incentive to tiktok to want to censor things for the benefit of the us government, but as it stands right now, i haven't seen any real proof of the matter. i can still see all the things that are being "censored" just fine.
as for your final question, i truly can't say anything definitively. i've made the mistake before of making assumptions based on what i know without accounting for the fact that i consume media in a vacuum. i dont tend to interact with people who disagree with me, and therefore i dont tend to see it, but that doesn't mean it doesnt exist. opposite extreme, but i tend to interact a lot with world news and events, so i see a lot of it, but that doesn't mean that everything is necessarily important. it's a difficult balance to strike. plus, in the age of clickbait and fear mongering, it's hard to come up with a definitive prediction. that being said, in my opinion, world war 3, if it happens, will not be a traditional war. because of the MAD (mutually-assured destruction) doctrine, major powers are terrified to go to war with each other out of fear of nuclear retaliation. as such, many of the wars will likely be proxy wars. for those that can not be proxy wars (such as if things escalate in europe between nato & russia), then there will likely be strict guidelines in place to try to prevent nuclear weaponry from being utilized. of course, there's a chance world leaders could be blinded in their quest for victory that they may ignore the MAD doctrine, but i truly do not believe any world leader is that stupid. trump, putin, even kim jong un, these are all people who care a lot about being scary, but they're not stupid. they all know that if they launch a nuke, one will be launched right back at them. if anyone launches a nuke, that will definitively be the end of civilization as we know it, and you cant conquer a world that no longer exists.
i'm realizing now that your question was not how ww3 would be fought, but rather where modern conflicts will take us (whoops, again long day lol). i think that with the us, it's too divisive right now for me to know exactly what will happen. with current tensions, it's not unlikely that some infighting may occur, though it's unlikely that it would devolve to a state of civil war. internationally, its a mixed bag. nato is clearly taking what russia is doing as a threat, but i dont believe that they will willingly enter war with russia, mostly because of MAD. it's likely that we may see some nato member states entering war without invoking article 5 (as article 5 only counts if one is *attacked*, not if one is the *attacker*), such as poland, though even that feels unlikely. globally, everyone is just kind of on edge, but in the age of nuclear weaponry, no one wants to be the guy who makes the first move.
anyway, i do appreciate you reading the ramblings of a tired history major. feel free to message me if you want to continue talking, can't promise i'll respond quickly, but i'll definitely get around to it eventually :3
by ket; ; Report
if THIS is what you call a lackluster response, then i guess i am doing something wrong lmao.
first of all, i am really happy that you not only answered my questions, but gave me an in-depth full commentary 4K - history 101 about it.
i just learned about proxy wars! i had only seen this being mentioned online before. oh, and not to mention about article 5, too. i feel like a student talking to a teacher lolololol - even though english is not my first language, you made everything pretty easy to understand, so i am highly thankful.
and yeah, i guess i will be atending your next classes from now on - ms. ket - as i find this entire subject to be extremely, exceedingly, tremendously interesting, to say the least :P
by not_ian; ; Report