I'm a journalism major and media studies minor, and I'm pretty set on that, but a recent conversation with my friends reminded me of what my life could have been like, had I chosen something different to study.

• English
  • Why: I liked reading books and I always enjoyed my English classes at school.
  • What changed my mind: I started really hating English class in high school, since all of my English teachers, despite being very intelligent, were all bananas. They refused to accept any interpretation of a text that differentiated from their views. I had a few friends who were off at college majoring in English who told me that college-level English people are even crazier, and while I know that's not completely true now, that totally scared me off back then.
  • Note: My minor is in the English college of my school, but it's not...English? I basically do what English majors do with books, but with film.
• Womens' Studies
  • Why: I am an avid feminist and care a lot about the role of women in our society. Blah blah blah, I think you get the idea.
  • What changed my mind: I got really burnt out as an activist and felt like there was no escape since I was involved in a really toxic atmosphere re: feminism. While I now know that self-care is really important to activists for a reason and obviously feminism is still very important to me, I decided it was in my best interest to change my minor
• Creative Writing
  • Why: I am a writer. Duh.
  • What changed my mind: I was in two creative writing classes in high school (one regular conventional one, the other was a script writing class) and I hated both of them. I hated being told what to do by teachers who, at the end of the day, did not consider themselves writers. I also realized that I function best as a writer when I do it in a non-classroom setting and that there was no way I could handle doing 4 years of that.
• Technical Theatre
  • Why: I was involved in theatre in high school and kind of liked it.
  • What changed my mind: Two things. A) I realized that I wasn't that good at it and B) long story short: something bad happened and it made me not want to do theater anymore.
• Political Science
  • Why: I thought about minoring in this since I have a huge interest in education reform and I had been advised by someone that if that's what I was interested in re: education, this is how I would go about it.
  • What changed my mind: The only reason I changed my mind was because I ended up picking my current/dream minor. I don't really have any horror stories.
• Graphic Design
  • Why: I love design and I'm pretty handy with InDesign / Photoshop / etc., if I do say so myself. (I still want to do design stuff in the future for the record.)
  • What changed my mind: When I was transferring, I saw that in order to be admitted to the art school (!), I had to submit a portfolio (!!) a month before the official deadline (!!!). Not having time to fulfill the requirements for the art school deadline and seeing my friends' workloads in art school, I decided to opt out.