And here’s what they had to say:
1.
Anonymous
3.
“Teaching degree here.
I have wanted to become a teacher since the second grade.
I started at the school as an instructional aide to find they don’t back their teachers or aides.
Teachers were going on their second year without raises, and aides weren’t considered employees.
They hire aides and let them go before their sixth months without having to give cause.
The school is notorious for it.”
“Political science major.
There were other avenues available and other directions I could have taken things, but hindsight is 20/20.”
“The moment I realized that I would regret my major was on the first day of clinical rotation.
For most of my life, I knew that I wanted to care for people.
I wanted to give compassionate care to sick people.
I wanted to be a healer.
The medical field is where I decided would help me help people.
More specifically, the nursing field.
“Nursing classes were the worst kind of hard.
The classes are so challenging, the class hours are long, and studying becomes your life.
Even though classes and the tests were challenging, I welcomed the challenge.
I couldn’t wait for clinical.
I couldn’t wait to don my new white scrub uniform.
The first day of my clinical rotation, I was up earlier than usual.
I couldn’t wait to get to the hospital.
The moment I got off the elevator, I knew I would regret choosing nursing as my major.
I knew from the nurses' faces.
I can honestly say that I regret it.
It’s not the patients; it is truly the organizations that make you regret it.”
“My major was youth ministry at a Christian liberal arts school.
I had it in my head that I was going to work in a ministry helping inner city children.
I worked my summers in college at a camp for inner-city schools.
Now I’m an atheist who works in IT management.”
“Journalism seemed perfect.
I’d get to write, learn a few technical skills, and hopefully get a job with it.
Journalism is strict; the dry, ‘objective’ language and restrictions on creativity are completely flipped in filmmaking.
you’re free to be creative and raw, as ridiculous as you want.
“I was passionate about health, fitness, and nutrition when I was younger.
I mostly wanted to help people.
I majored in kinesiology (sports medicine).
“Not so much the wrong major, just I should not have gone.
So, now I am seriously in debt and will never get out of it.
Then, of course, now I am overqualified and overeducated for jobs.
So, totally not worth it for me that I went to college.”
I went on to become a paralegal instead.”
“I majored in mechanical engineering.
Take notes, kids.
I realized I screwed up when, in my final year, they started talking about graduate school.
“The major I regret was civil engineering.
Apparently, being interested in buildings and bridges isn’t enough to like engineering.
And those are the people you have to work with for the rest of your life.
After four years, I switched to geography and loved every second of it.
It turns out I’m a people person, not a technical person.”
“My first degree was inhorticulture.
I was passionate about it when I went into it.
The classes and labs were grueling, but I learned so many cool things.
Then, two issues occurred.
The scarcity of jobs beyond sales or manual labor and sexism.
I realized I was hitting a 15/16-per-hour paywall at every job; Id never make more than that.
Manual labor was tiring, mentally and physically, after three years.
Note: Submissions have been edited for length and/or clarity.
