You Don’t Actually Need A Major. For Real.

Your undergrad degree doesn’t matter.

I’ll say it again: your undergrad major doesn’t actually matter.

Now, I’m not saying this in the sense your degree is worthless; on the contrary undergrad is one of the most formative and enlightening times in your life. Along the same lines, I am also not saying that your undergrad degree isn’t important. As many health science majors will attest, a bachelors’ degree in any sort of pre-med track is important for getting into medical school. However, I am saying that the importance of undergrad lies in the fact that it doesn’t determine the rest of your life.

You can major in English and end up running an engineering firm. You can graduate with honors in architecture and find your career in human resources. You can study accounting and decide you want to be a skydiving instructor. Your undergrad degree is not suddenly irrelevant just by the fact that you change your career path at some point in your life, and the twists and turns that life will take you on probably started with your undergrad degree, but were not entirely the result of it.

Undergrad serves as a time to learn. It’s a time to take classes on what you’re interested in and test out your thoughts and theories in a controlled academic setting. Here at Northeastern, it also serves as a very practical time to explore industries and jobs that you think you could like. It’s your time to find out if treating patients is as interesting as studying the nursing curriculum, or if working on a prototype is as riveting as engineering labs, or if working at a senator’s office is actually as enthralling as learning political theory.

When I say your undergrad major doesn’t matter, I mean that your life is not set on a single destination track as a result of it. What really determines your life path is the accumulation of skills and knowledge you gain from every area of life, whether it be in class, at work, or sitting on a park bench for 30 minutes observing life. The skills, knowledge, and passion you have are what will chart your path and will be as unpredictable as Boston weather.

This fundamental idea is one we really try to drive home in the Explore Program, but it really did not click for me until I went on co-op. On my first co-op alone, I met a software engineer who studied biology undergrad (then realized they fainted at the site of blood), a marketing director who majored in religious studies, and one of my co-workers was even a tea apprentice in the hills of Japan before deciding to become a user interface engineer. These were real life people with real life experiences that really did not match what they wanted when they were 18 years old. They neither regretted their education nor the path that it set them on, even if it was windier than expected.

Northeastern’s Explore and Co Op program are the most valuable tools you will have for the next four to five years. They allow you to explore what you think you’d like, find out what you don’t like, and move forward with what you want. They are also there to catch you when you figure out you actually hate studying chemistry or working in PR, and they give you more options to try out. So, take advantage of everything this place has to offer. Before you know it, your four/five years will be kaput.

And remember: your major doesn’t matter. What you do here does.

By: Olivia Giorlandino

Originally Published on: Feb 1, 2018