I changed from Proposed Anthropology to History my Junior Year.
Depends…
Major in Electrical Engineering, planning on being an EE and then decide to switch your major to Art Education and be an art teacher - I’d say that will change your life.
Switching from one dead end liberal arts undergraduate degree (like mine - Film) to another (like my other one - History), nope.
On the other hand, I changed my entire life, my perspective, my politics, my religion, my career - and most of it can be traced to a conversation I took up in a hallway with a complete stranger in high school - who became a good friend, introduced me to my husband, and general changed the direction of my life.
So certainly something like changing your major could lead to all sorts of life changing things.
Absolutely.
Did 2.5 as a Psychology specialist, realized that not everyone in university was as desperately unhappy with their life/studies as everyone in Psych was. So I changed to Psych major/Environmental Studies major, which necessitated taking an extra year because I switched mid-semester. It worked out in the end because I used that mid-semester time to work to make money.
And yes, it changed my life for the better, a million times better, a zillion. I can’t bear to think of what my life would be like if I had graduated as a Psych major. … shudder …
And, tho you didn’t ask, I’ll tell you that this all happened at one of the big universities in my city, and after I finished I did a Masters in Env Studies at the other big uni in the city, and again that was night and day. If I had switched universities instead of just majors, I would have been a million times happier still.
Absolutely.
Did 2.5 as a Psychology specialist, realized that not everyone in university was as desperately unhappy with their life/studies as everyone in Psych was. So I changed to Psych major/Environmental Studies major, which necessitated taking an extra year because I switched mid-semester. It worked out in the end because I used that mid-semester time to work to make money.
And yes, it changed my life for the better, a million times better, a zillion. I can’t bear to think of what my life would be like if I had graduated as a Psych major. … shudder …
And, tho you didn’t ask, I’ll tell you that this all happened at one of the big universities in my city, and after I finished I did a Masters in Env Studies at the other big uni in the city, and again that was night and day. If I had switched universities instead of just majors, I would have been a million times happier still.
The school system is a bit different here, but I’ll give it a go anyway. I started CEGEP in Health Sciences, I was going to be a geneticist. For reasons I won’t get into, I got really bad grades one semester and switched into Social Sciences. It absolutely changed my life.
I’m now studying Ancient History and it’s a pretty all-consuming force in my life right now. I may never have fully realized how much I love this topic if I didn’t switch. (ps, I’m doing a minor in bio, too.)
Depends. For most people I know, it wasn’t a big deal.
But it was a huge deal for my youngest sister. She was pre-pharmacy for two years, and took a ton of science classes. She struggled with all of them, and barely got accepted to pharmacy school. She was miserable for 1 1/2 of those two years.
She turned down pharmacy school, has changed her major to undecided, and is now looking around for a new major. It’s hugely life-changing for her. She’s gone from knowing what she was going to do with the rest of her life to being totally uncertain. She won’t graduate in four years, which means she has to find a way to pay for the extra time in school (mom & dad only pick up 4 years). She’s gone from being supremely miserable to supremely confused.
So it’s been a huge deal for her.
My roommate sophmore year went from double-majoring in physics and computer science (both incredibly tough programs) to majoring in “failing out of school and working at Blockbuster Video”. But he didn’t go to class at all, so I think he would have changed his major to that no matter what he had started with.
Changing majors is a huge deal. Like it or not, your professional career is largely decided by what and where you study and how well you do in school. I wish I had switched from Civil Engineering to Finance or Marketing or something. It’s certainly a lot easier and I absolutely hated CE.
Trust me…it’s a lot easier to change majors before you graduate then it is to change careers afterwards. There’s nothing worse than getting stuck in a career track that you absolutely hate.
I don’t know if it ended up being a “life changing” event but I’m glad I switched business schools. When you are in classes with people who can’t show up to group presentations on time because they are making copies 5 minutes before the presentation is due or you have idiot middle-aged housewives who can’t grasp the concept of discounted cash flows, you know that you are not in a pipeline to corporate greatness.