What’s Your Major? Who Knows

  
Looking at colleges is exhausting. I am not sure how people with multiple children do this over and over again. Today was our last school for this trip. Since we have a friend that works here we had a little extra tour so it was more like looking at two schools than one since we got to look more in depth into one of the colleges at a University.

The admissions lady who ran the information session asked all the prospective students in the room what they were interested in studying and I was amazed at how specific almost all of the high school juniors were about their perspective majors. I was happy that one lone boy was brave enough to say undecided.  
The daunting thing is that if you want to go to a University that is made up of different colleges you have to apply to that college that has your major. I went to a liberal arts college, that was helpful since I went thinking I was interested in economics, but after first semester macro I clearly knew it was not for me. It took a while before I realized that I was going to have enough art credits to make it my major. In the end it did not hurt me any that I did not know what the hell I wanted to do when I was seventeen.
At one of our previous tours this week there was a boy on our tour who wanted to study pharmacy. I was very interested in how, at his young age, he got to that point. Perhaps his parents owned a pharmacy and he liked standing on his feet all day. I was restrained and did not ask him.
Carter is very interested in the “where” she is going to college, as in which city, and she wants a city. DC has a big draw in that it is such a beautiful city. Although she claims she is not interested in politics, that is until you get her to actually talk about the current flock of presidential candidates and then she has quite a bit to say on the matter, she does love Washington.
It does not hurt that the diversity is high and the people are nice. After lunch today we stopped in a Starbucks and one of the baristas asked Carter if she’s would try a new drink they were creating. She said, “No thank you.” The guy then said, “I want to give it to you, on me.” No one else in the place was being offered a free drink. “If you don’t like it you won’t be out anything,” he said. This was not even the barista who was ringing us up, so he got our guy to ring it up and then put in his employee code so it was free. This does not happen to us at home, at least it has never happened to me. This kind of stuff certainly makes one like a city.

  
I think we have explored a few cities that each give Carter a different idea about places to go to college. I just hope we now can navigate the what to study question. I don’t feel like there is any harm in being undecided. The world is changing fast and maybe there will be a totally new major by the time Carter actually goes to college. As long as she is someplace with nice people she will be fine. I just don’t think she can count on getting another free Starbucks. That is a once in a lifetime happening.