Workshops help students choose majors

Ana Adinolfi
Jason Koski/University Photography
Students in the “Exploring Majors and Careers" workshop led by Ana Adinolfi, a career counselor for the College of Arts and Sciences, talk about resources that will help them decide on their major.

Imagine you’re a freshman in the College of Arts and Sciences. The choices are endless.

You can sign up for this or that club, choose among a zillion different items for dinner at North Star, take a class in astronomy or Asian studies and spend study time at the library or in your room.

A major? You need to choose one of those, too.

“I think it’s absurd that I’m asked to choose my career when I’m only 18 years old,” says Oliver Bolger ’18.

Understandably, freshmen are under lots of pressure. But there are a host of resources to help students feel comfortable with their decisions and not rushed to make them right away.

“With the College of Arts and Sciences, you get the experience of a small liberal arts school within the context of a larger research university, and that’s what I wanted,” says Meghan Hadley ’18.

Hadley isn’t sure about her major – she loves science and math, but also enjoys English and French. Her dad is a doctor and her mom a zoologist who recently completed a children’s book. They met as freshmen at Cornell and have been together ever since.

“I’m thinking about biology and society, and maybe minoring in global health,” Hadley says. “I know I want to be in the Peace Corps after college.”

Many students are hungry for some guidance as they start searching for a major. Some of them gathered on Mondays in September with Ana Adinolfi, a career counselor in the college, who offers “Exploring Majors and Careers,” a workshop geared to freshmen. Her key message: With a liberal arts degree, you can do anything.

That idea “is wonderful, but it’s also scary,” Adinolfi says. “It’s powerful on the first day when we go around the room and they realize they’re all in the same boat, undecided about their majors and careers.”

Emily Jones ’18, who took the workshop, is thinking of majoring in psychology, but not sure of a career. “Now I know where to go next; I have some resources to explore,” Jones says.

The workshop helps students explore their interests and values through discussions and assessment tools. Then they’re given many resources to explore and ideas to try: meeting with undergraduate studies directors, setting up informational interviews and attending events like the Career Conversations series, which brings alumni to campus to talk about their careers.

“Being undecided was particularly stressful when the first pre-enroll came around,” says Jessie Matalon ’15. “While it seemed like everyone else had their courses all mapped out … I had the whole course catalog to choose from.”

Matalon’s interest in history along with a number of other fields eventually led her to an American studies major.

The Arts and Sciences Career Services office also offers talks about finding jobs in specific fields, one-on-one career assessments and counseling, connections to alumni, and information about internships, externships and continuing education.

Sofia Da Silva ’18 has a better idea of what she’d like to study, having taken a gap year to travel.

“I applied as a bio major and wanted to stay within the biology area, but culture has always interested me,” she says. “I’m thinking about anthropology because it involves the science of how humans relate to each other.”

Da Silva also is considering several minors, including inequality studies and feminist, gender and sexuality studies.

For freshmen, choosing a major is really only the first in a long line of decisions to be made before graduation day, Adinolfi says. Counselors can help students explore careers and prepare to find a job or pursue graduate school.

“You have to make it happen,” she tells freshmen. “If you’re choosing a major that you’re interested in and you love, a career will come to you.

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