I have a liberal arts degree, so I understand how you feel.  I have a Bachelor of the Arts degree in psychology and a minor in sociology.  When I tell people, people who are my parents’ age, what I studied in university, I have to immediately brace myself for uncomfortable questions like: “What are you gonna do with that?” asked in the tone drenched in concern.  The worst questions are the ones asked by people who assume that as a psychology major, I psychoanalyze every person that talks to me.  “Just what we need,” I recall one restaurant manager scoffing at me, “More psychotherapists reading our minds!”  Looking back I wish I had calmly replied, “Yes, sir, I am psychoanalyzing you. And yes, your father did not give you enough affection when you were young. Also, I would like to order some fries to go.” 

I both love and loathe the ambiguity of post-graduation employment options for arts and sciences, aka liberal arts, degrees.  If you major in engineering, it is expected that you will become an engineer.  If you major in journalism, it is expected that you will become a journalist.  I majored in psychology, does that make me a psychologist?  Does it make me a therapist, as I once intended to become?  Ha ha, nope!  That would require at least two more years of grad school.  And since my last year of undergrad was heavily clouded by major depression (thank you, my chemically imbalanced brain), I have concluded that pursuing a career that would require me to sit in a quite room and listen to strangers tell me sad details about their lives would definitely not turn out well for me.  So here I am, almost three years out of college.  I have a psychology degree, and I am not a psychologist.  And sometimes this makes me feel like a failure.  And sometimes this leads me to regret my major.  Like I said earlier, I understand how you feel.

According to the Internet, and the small to moderate number of individuals within my social circle, there are many reasons why someone may come to regret their major.  Some were pressured by their parents to pursue a career in a field they had no interest in, and they now feel trapped in a career they hate.  Some majored in a creative subject they enjoy, but now they struggle to find work and feel their lack of “practical skills” is to blame.  Many people’s regret stems from the tens of thousands of dollars they paid for an education that has not immediately lead to a job with an income that makes paying off hefty student loans seem feasible. 

My source of regret is a little hard for me to pin down.  To summarize my college major journey: I started out as a creative writing major, hated my classes and decided my chances of penning the next great American novel were pretty slim, so I switched to journalism.  After the switch, I still hated my classes, and my alma mater, so I transferred.  My second school had an amazing journalism program, but it was also highly intensive and did not suite my interests.  I got so little sleep that I had visual and auditory hallucinations.  The next semester I had a meltdown in a janitor’s closet and called my mom, who convinced me to change majors to psychology since that was my favorite AP class.  So I became a psychology major, and added a minor in sociology since I already had half the necessary credits.  I loved my classes!  I enrolled in a summer research intensive, joined Psy Chi, volunteered in a clinical psych lab, and became the secretary of my school’s NAMI chapter.  I applied to grad schools with half an idea of why I wanted to go, let alone what I would do once I got there.  And after several rejections and the aforementioned major depression, I spent my final semester hunkered down, taking my medication, studying just hard enough and skipping classes just infrequently enough to finish school with my GPA intact.  Sometimes doing my best just means dragging myself across the finish line.  By the time I graduated, I was burnt out, uninspired, and sleep deprived from four long years of late-night cramming sessions.  I had no clue what I actually enjoyed doing.  I did not know if I had any job skills.  I knew that I was good at writing essays.  I knew that I could explain the difference between Bipolar I and Bipolar II.  I knew that I was good at making flash cards, and taking notes, and memorizing the songs from Steven Universe.  I did not know how I wanted to contribute to society and make my mark on the world.

I think it is natural for some of us college grads to have regretful feelings about our student days because the post-graduation stakes are so terrifyingly high.  Our generation is entering the workforce with a combined $1.5 trillion dollars of student loan debt and in our post-2008-recession economy, it is difficult to find jobs that match our skills and provide us the incomes we need to pay off the loans (let alone rent apartments, buy car insurance, or go to the hospital once in a while).  Many of us have also experienced some degree of helicopter parenting, or at least significant social pressure to join multiple extracurricular activities and enroll in the hardest classes during our younger years.  Many millennials have been living in an achievement-oriented pressure cooker for most of our lives, so if we achieve the ultimate goal—a college degree—and then find ourselves struggling to get by in “adulthood,” I think many of us end up feeling deeply disappointed in ourselves.

Not long ago when I was working at a department store right after graduation, one coworker told me she planned to reenroll in school for a second undergraduate degree—which would have meant doing another four years of undergrad.  She said she was not proud of where she was in her life, living with her mom and working part time at the local megamall.  She wanted to earn a different major that would hopefully enable her to get the career, and life, she wanted.  I could understand where this young woman was coming from.  When the present is not what we expect, it only makes sense to want a do-over.  Regretting one’s major is understandable, and it may even be good for us to indulge in self-pity from time to time.  We are in debt and good jobs are hard to find, and basic necessities like apartments and medical care are so damn expensive and even our parents’ insurance does not cover everything.  We are in an effed-up situation, and I think blaming ourselves for that is natural.  However, I do not think it is healthy to engage in prolonged episodes of regret and self-blame, or rather, blame of a younger version of ourselves who could not have known adulthood could feel this shitty.

I do not think it’s healthy to regret your past for too long.  Because you cannot go back in time and know things that you only know right now, because you have grown up enough as a person to know them.  Regret is natural, but it can be paralyzing and cause you to forget that you have so many skills and so many options to find a job, a social life, and a home that may not satisfy you forever, but could be enough right now. 

Post-graduate regret (and burnout) left me paralyzed and amnestic to the skills I did indeed possess for nearly a year after I finished school.  However, during and after that period, I have held a number of different job positions (none of the hiring managers for which have given a flying heck what I majored in).  Right after graduation, I worked part-time at two department stores at the local mall to support myself while I recovered from university burnout by binge-watching Netflix each night until I passed out at 10pm.  After nine-months of placating to hostile customers and inhaling greasy French fries over 15-minute lunch breaks, I felt more than ready for a change.  I joined AmeriCorps and moved to Texas where I taught bicycle safety to children, managed databases, and wrote blog posts for multiple nonprofits.  In the months since AmeriCorps, I have found my first real office job through a temp agency.  I am nearly finished with my first posting.  The temp agency has connections with many different organizations and industries, and they are looking for options so I can start a new position soon.  I feel like a kid in an ice cream store – I want to try everything.  I’m excited to gain real world experience and learn about what work environments I like best.  Doing communications for nonprofits in AmeriCorps helped me realize that I want to go to grad school for rhetoric.  But what exactly do I want to do with that degree?  Continue onto the PhD track?  Find a job in publishing?  Until I figure out what I would do with a graduate degree, I want to keep working.  Maybe in a few years, I’ll join the PeaceCorps and teach English to kids in some country no one in my family has ever visited before.  I don’t know.

I am a quarter of the way through my life and I still don’t know what I want to be when I grow up.  And I am becoming gradually, increasingly okay with that.

I am not permanently restricted by what I did or did not study in university.  I am not forever limited by what I did or did not know about who I am or what I wanted from life when I was 18-years-old, and very likely, neither are you. At age 18, you were a completely different person who wanted different things from life, and you made the best decisions for yourself at that time in your life.  Remember, at 18, you were still technically a teenager.  If I could go back in time to my university days, I might try to convince my younger self to join a literary magazine or a poetry club just so present-day me could feel more qualified for the communications positions I suddenly crave.  But who knows if younger me would have even listened?  Joining such organizations may not have been the best thing for me at that time in my life.  I was a different person with different interests, and different needs to feel whole.  I’m more okay now with the fact that I have changed a lot over the past few years, and I will likely continue to change as I become different people over the course of my life.

There are a few successful and professionally fulfilled people who knew what they wanted to be when they were, like, five-years-old, and spent the next twenty years of their lives honing their craft until they eventually got a career in a coveted organization within their field.  These people are lucky.  They are also in a tiny minority.  They are the exception, not the rule.  And those of us who are not part of their lucky little community should not beat ourselves up over it.

The world is not going to cave-in just because I didn’t choose some single perfect career path for myself when I was still technically a teenager.  I’m learning to be okay with what I know about myself now, and what I did not know about myself before.  I’m learning to be okay with uncertainty in my future.  I’m learning to be okay with the fact the first several jobs I hold may not lead to long, perfect careers, and that is okay.  My journey has started, and I don’t know where it ends, or if it even needs to end.  That is okay, and I am okay, and you are okay too.  Wherever you are in your own post-college journey, you are okay too.