Can't decide on a major. Any advice/information would be much appreciated.

[eloquent_leo]

Hello all,

This will be my first year at my local university in the fall. I plan on getting a bachelors degree. The two majors that I am stuck in between is a bachelors of science - major in psychology, or bachelors of science - major in multimedia design.
If there is anyone on this forum who has a degree on either, would you mind letting me know your experiences with the classes? And also what professions you now have after getting these degrees? Any information would be very helpful. And thank you in advance

 

[Silas]

I have this same issue. Often times I feel I could be a life time student if it were practical.

 

[Faye]

It seems like a bachelors in psychology wont necessarily take you to a job related to that. To actually be a psychologist or counselor, you will need an advanced degree like a ph.d. in psychology or maybe a masters in social work for counselling. The closest I've seen my friends with psychology majors get is working as a research assistant in a psych department (and he intends to get a ph.d. later I think), and the other is working as a drug counselor for children/teenagers. A third has become a dance instructor. Of course, we all only graduated ten months ago.

I only took 2 psych classes, and I was not impressed with them (intro and social psychology). To me, the social psych class just seemed to be an uncritical humanities class pretending to be a science and backing itself up with evolutionary psychology instead of quality reasoning and good research. It wasn't all bad and some of it was extremely interesting, but most of it I could not stand.

I know nothing about multimedia design.

My advice is to take some classes in both and then either try to double major, which will give you more options later, or at least it will give you an idea of what you are better suited to do. I think it is a mistake to choose your major before you expose yourself to different things. I was a sociology major until the 2nd term of my sophomore year, but looking back on it, I wish I had just double majored in something else. I tried (and my school also tried) to force myself into a specific major early on, which is a mistake. You're better off being exploratory and open-minded and taking classes in very different areas in my opinion.

 

[Sriracha]

I should be a career counselor.

What are your other goals or where do you see yourself in 10 years? Do you see yourself alone or settling into family life? What is your preferred wage? Tell me what kind of things interest you, besides psychology and multimedia ... helping people (if so, how?) What are your strengths/skills and what are some of your weaknesses?

 

[sassafras]

After you do the necessary soul searching that sriracha suggested, my advice is to thoroughly investigate the job market in the area you know you're going to want to settle down in; figure out which companies you'd like to work for, if you want to do the corporate culture thing, or call a couple of psychologists in the area and ask them on their opinion on job prospects. Some people might not give you the time of day, but most people are actually very eager to talk about their careers. Make a list of questions and just spend the day interviewing people and researching your job prospects. Who knows? You might even make some valuable contacts.

Best of luck!

 

[Vict]

I was a multimedia major.

I'll tell you now that you'll learn a lot of little bits of information across a broad field, but you won't specialize in much. It's fine if you're someone who can take the little bits of information and expand on your knowledge and experience independently, but if you expect to come out of it as an expert it's not going to work out. Your expertise will be developed in the field.

I decided to follow a different track and life yielded additional opportunities, but I did work in marketing for a while as a web specialist. I created banner ads, websites, and I managed all sorts of website-related tasks around the marketing for video game releases. It was cool because I used all the skills I picked up in school, but it was too far removed from the video game production process for my tastes. The real trick these days is to even find a job of this sort when there's a pool of people like me--mid to late 20s and early 30s--who have experience beyond a college degree.