Not Knowing What to Study in College (Brandon Alago)

Introduction

Many of those who graduate high school and are thinking about continuing their educational journey believe that they already have to know what they want to major in before they even attend their first class at college.  Most of the time people have no clue what they really want to study, until much later into their college career. Some people even graduate with a bachelor’s degree and still don’t have the answer.  The beautiful thing about college is that you can choose how you can tackle this journey.  Everyone’s experience is different, and today I’m going to tell you about my rollercoaster college journey.

I didn’t have much of an idea what I wanted to study when I first enrolled at LaGuardia Community College back in September 2016. I started working at a movie theater during the Summer after I graduated high school and I had just been promoted to a supervisor position around the same time that my first semester of college began.  I remember speaking with an advisor during my freshman year of college, and he told me that I should enroll in Liberal Arts Media Studie based on some of my interests.   I remember sitting there nodding my head just agreeing with everything he said, not really understanding what I was really in for.  After a while I started thinking “I’m in college…shouldn’t I know what I want to study by now?” I had some ideas of what I wanted to do, and I’ll gladly share them!

I enjoyed (and still do enjoy) movies and video games very much and was hoping that I could maybe find a career path that would lead me into one of those industries. My first idea at the time was to become a video game writer, and was hoping that my screenwriting class would help me understand the linear path that was required in order for me to achieve such a career.  I learned very quickly from that class that a linear path to becoming a video game writer didn’t exist. In fact there really wasn’t any clear path when it came to the film/media career.  This made me feel very lost and anxious.  There was even a time during that semester when I thought “Oh maybe I should forget about film and get a hospitality degree so that I can become a manager at a very luxurious hotel” but that idea didn’t last very long and thank goodness it didn’t, because at this moment in my life I am so over working in hospitality (story for another time.)  So I decided to stick with pursuing the Liberal Arts Media Studies Degree and I have absolutely no regrets about it.  Screenwriting was one of my favorite classes during my time at Laguardia.  I got to really let my creativity shine and came up with such a chaotic short film script for my final project that it easily became one of the best scripts in the class! I even made a friend in that class that ended up becoming one of my closest friends for the next few years. After a year of attending LaGuardia I ended up taking another important film class called Video Production 1, and this is where I was really thrown into the world of what it was like to be a filmmaker.  I learned so much more about camera angles, different types of shots, video editing, sound recording, etc.  During that class I noticed another part of myself emerge. One that rarely ever comes out in a school environment.  It was my leadership side.  I enjoyed taking the lead during class assignments, and the director/writer role when it came to my homework assignments.  My friend that I had met in my screenwriting class was a massive help, and I honestly couldn’t thank him enough for everything he taught me when it came to the film world.  During that class I met another friend who is still one of my closest friends to this day.   I had such an amazing time during my Video Production class, and was so grateful for the friends that I made along the way.  The three of us even went on to win a competition that was hosted by an elevator company and the winner was the one who created the best commercial! It was an experience that I never would have gotten if I didn’t major in film.

I rambled quite a bit there, so let me fast forward to when I got my Associate’s Degree in Liberal Arts Media Studies.  Since LaGuardia is a 2-year school, I decided to continue my film adventure at Hunter College. This is where everything changed drastically.  It was Spring 2019, and I had taken about a year off from school.  During that time off I continued working at the movie theater and even got promoted to a management position!  I was interested in filming some short films and skits with my friends including the two friends that I was part of the elevator commercial with.  We never finished the main project that we were working on unfortunately, but it created so many fun memories to think back on!  We stopped filming a little after my semester at Hunter began. I actually also quit my job at the movie theater when the semester began because I wanted to fully focus on school and my future career from here on out. In order for me to take any film classes at Hunter College, I had to take a prerequisite class that involved…photoshop and coding?  Yea to this day I still don’t understand why this class was mandatory, but hey I enrolled in it because I had no choice if I wanted to graduate with a Bachelor’s Degree in Film.  Another thing I didn’t quite understand was why I had to take even more random electives that had nothing to do with film.  Wasn’t that the point of going to a 2 year school? I thought you would just go and do electives for 2 years and once you transferred to a 4 year college, you would just need to focus on the classes that were required for your major.  I was caught off guard when they told me that I had to take 2 semesters of a foreign language, and a whole ton of other random courses. It frustrated me beyond belief. Anyway, back to that weird photoshop/coding class.

One month into that class, and  I was completely lost.  I was behind, I felt hopeless, alone, and overcome with so much anxiety whenever I had to attend that class.  One day during class, the professor decided to put everyone into groups, and the assignment was to present our homework assignments together.  I didn’t do the assignment and was instantly flooded with anxiety.  I grabbed my backpack, stood up, and walked right out the door and didn’t look back.  I was in a full blown spiral. I had just walked out of a mandatory class that was necessary for my degree.  I knew that I wasn’t ever going to catch up with the workload, and was debating on dropping the class.   If I dropped the class, that would mean I would have to take it next semester.  Now typically that isn’t the worst thing ever…but I completely loathed that class and had no desire to ever take it again.  I spent some time thinking of my next approach and came up with an idea…I was going to drop out and pursue a film internship.  I was still very much interested in pursuing film and knew that a film degree was not required in order to be successful in the industry.  One of the best ways of getting into the film industry was by starting out at an internship, so I made it my goal to find one as soon as possible.  The best thing is…I found one way faster than I thought.

I started my internship towards the end of my Spring 2019 semester, and it was something that I was very interested in, because it was a video editing internship at an E-Sports Startup!! I am very passionate about gaming, so I thought that this was a perfect opportunity for me!  I would work alongside other beginners like me, and learn from experts in the field and hopefully make close friends like the ones I made during my time in LaGuardia! In the beginning  I was very excited…but unfortunately left very disappointed.  Allow me to summarize my experience there very quickly (this is a college blog after all.)  I was tasked to edit 8 hour long twitch streams and cut them up into 30 minute segments so that it could stream on some irrelevant streaming service that I already forgot the name of.  It was…painfully tedious, and unmotivating.  I did get along with my colleagues very well though, and they were the main reason I stayed at that place for 5 months.  Most of them were older than me as I was one of the youngest people there.  Seeing most of their financial situations at their age is honestly what discouraged me the most about continuing there…I never forgot when one of the mid 30 year old interns told me “I have $30 to my name”. He had been pursuing this career path since he was my age or younger.  That’s when I really started wondering if I wanted to continue pursuing this career path. All in all, I didn’t learn any valuable skills while I was there, but I wasn’t fully ready to give up.  

After my time at the internship, I decided to give YouTube a try! I wanted to create a series where I would show everyone just how difficult earning certain gaming achievements were.  I honestly had a really fun time with it in the beginning, and am still very proud of some of those videos.  I unfortunately lost motivation pretty quickly though due to the lack of views, which is one of the main reasons why people even quit YouTube in the first place.   At this point I wasn’t really interested in pursuing film/video editing at all anymore.  I didn’t really know if school was for me, and didn’t see any point of going back. I was unemployed for 1 month after the internship ended and really hated sitting around doing nothing.  In October 2019, I got a job in hospitality and honestly thought I would never go back to school again.  

Fast forward to January 2022, and my perspective on so many things had changed.  I broke up with my ex after 2 and a half years of dating.  I got into a situationship that lasted about a year and a half.  I moved out of my parents house in January 2021 and was living with roommates in a very tiny apartment, and I had been working at my hospitality job again since it reopened  in April 2021.  Oh yea and at this point I was celebrating my birthday alone in my room because I had to isolate myself because I tested positive for COVID.  Thankfully one of my close friends decided to keep me company and we spent so many hours playing Warzone and chatting about a wide range of topics. One of those topics was about going back to school and changing careers.   At this point I was really interested in becoming a therapist, and thought it would be amazing to work in a field where I could truly help people.  I had learned a lot about myself during the peak years of COVID and met several people who said that I would make an amazing therapist so I decided to re-enroll at Hunter College and pursue a Social Work degree! I was ecstatic when Hunter accepted me again…though there were some new challenges I had to face. 

I was immediately put on Academic Probation because I had dropped out and only passed 2 of the 4 classes I had enrolled in for the Spring 2019 semester. In 2019 I received a W for the photoshop/coding class and an F for another class because I decided to not show up for the final nor do the presentation.   Why did that I do that you ask? Because I was so confident that I would never go back to school again, and saw no point in putting effort in a class I didn’t care about at all. That was the first and only F I have ever received, but hey at least it’s because I chose to deliberately fail the course right? Anyway, I had to retake that class in my first semester back and I got an A+.  After my first semester ended  I was no longer on Academic Probation, and was on my way to earning my BA with a nice looking GPA.  I wanted to major in Social Work, because my plan was to then pursue a Masters in Social Work, then earn a LCSW (Licensed Clinical Social Work) certification, then earn the necessary experience that would be needed for me to be fully equipped to open up my own practice.  The goal was to become a fully remote therapist, take on clients who lived in wealthy cities, so that I could make a high income and live in an area where the cost of living was low.  More therapists are beginning to do this and honestly it was a great plan! Well…I unfortunately couldn’t enroll in the Social Work Bachelor program, because it was only given to full time students and at that time I was a part time student.  I was working full time, paying rent, living in New York City, and was paying tuition with no financial aid.  If I had returned to school as a full time student I am confident I would have dropped out again so I have zero regrets about returning as a part time student.  Besides, it wasn't all bad.  Alternatively I could major in sociology and just enroll in a Master’s of Social Work afterwards.  Thankfully a BA in Sociology is able to help you be accepted into a good chunk of master degrees because of how broad it is.  So now I just had to hang in there and put up with school for another 2-3 years.  How hard could that be right? 

Fast forward to present day me…I have abandoned that therapist plan.  Why did I stop pursuing such an awesome plan?  I kind of just lost motivation I guess.  I’m still pursuing the BA in Sociology though and am currently in my final semester! However, once I graduate Hunter College, I’m going to try and start a new life with my girlfriend in Berlin.  It’s a massive shift that’s for sure.  I researched what it would take to be a therapist in Germany, because I thought it would be cool to pursue a Master’s in Germany, but unfortunately Germany and the USA have different accreditations, and it would result in me potentially having to retake many classes just to earn an equivalent of a BA over there.  I’ll save my future move to Berlin for another blog, this one is already long enough, and I still have to get to my main point! 

As you see from my experience, I was, and still am unsure about the career I would like to pursue, and that is completely ok! It’s insane that society creates so much pressure for high school seniors to know what they want to study! It creates a massive amount of anxiety, false expectations, and if you’re not careful, you can end up with a large amount of student loans for a degree that you don’t even want to use!  I’ve seen this happen to so many people and it’s honestly tragic.  Working so hard, paying so much money, all for a career that you end up not caring about because you didn’t explore enough and were expected to have all of the answers in the very beginning.  For anyone who hasn’t attended college yet, here’s a piece of advice.  Unless you’re ABSOLUTELY SURE about what you want to study, AVOID FOUR YEAR COLLEGES!! ESPECIALLY THE EXPENSIVE ONES!!  I recommend attending a community college first and earning an Associate’s Degree.  This allows you to work towards a degree that is more valuable than a Highschool degree, and allows you to make progress towards a Bachelor's degree at the same pace as someone who went straight into a four year college. 

Think about this for a moment.  Two people are the same age and are Juniors in a 4 year college. They also have the exact same amount of college credits. One enrolled into that college immediately after high school, and the other transferred after earning their Associate Degree. Now let’s say they both drop out at the same time from that 4-year college to pursue something else.  Even though they both worked the same amount, and have the exact same amount of college credits, one has a degree that is worth more than the other, and most likely paid less per semester than the one who went straight into the 4-year school.  The value of an Associate Degree is unfortunately something that isn’t spoken about very often.  

Let me start wrapping this blog up.  No one’s path in college is the same.  There are going to be plenty of moments where you question why you’re studying or if it’s even worth it. Most people will debate on changing their major, which happens incredibly often.  College is where you truly start learning who you are, not high school.  Enjoy the journey in college and go at your own pace!  Step outside your comfort zone and value the new experiences you find along the way! Embrace changes, because it’s during those moments when we truly learn about ourselves the most.  If you’re not ready for college right after high school, then don’t enroll right away!  Take as long as you need and only attend when you think you’re ready.  College isn’t going anywhere.  It will wait for you.  Also that saying “don’t dropout because you’ll never go back” doesn’t apply to everyone.  It didn’t apply to me, and I love being able to prove those who believe in that mindset wrong.  So be you, and don’t let others tell you what you can and can't do or how you should or shouldn’t live your life.   Live as authentically as you can and just embrace the adventure that life has to offer.