The evolution of dreams | Grad Edition 2024 | dailyuw.com – Dailyuw

Its a common cliche that college is a time of change, of finding yourself as you enter into adulthood. Its a cliche for a good reason according to the National Center for Educational Statistics, 30% of undergraduates change their major at least once within their first three years. On top of that, 10% of undergraduates change their major more than once.

Anecdotally, it certainly feels as though my friends and I have been circling closer and closer to finding a future path that rings true to ourselves. I was pre-med when I started at UW, and after a year, I decided to switch to humanities a story that Ive heard echoed by many of my peers.

Initially, I was worried about money, like many. I didnt see a way forward in the humanities that would provide me the kind of life I wanted. I realized, though, that I have a real passion for linguistics, and Ive never looked back. Its incredibly refreshing to learn things that truly excite you.

The paths people take in college are often unique and individual, so I interviewed three other seniors about their college journeys at UW..

John Stephenson is a graduating history major, who began in business.

I started out at WSU in Pullman, Stephenson said. And my plan was to be a finance major there. I didn't actually really have a clear goal of what I wanted to do. I just figured I'll major in finance because that seems like a decent path to make money.

After realizing he didnt find his business classes fulfilling, Stephenson transferred to Bellevue College while he decided what he wanted to do.

I was still taking a couple of business classes, and then I applied to transfer to UW and I applied to the Foster School of Business and didn't get in, Stephenson said. So that was the point that told me, Yeah, I dont think business is my future. What I discovered is I have a passion for history throughout taking all these courses, whether at Bellevue or UW. I've always taken history courses and I always liked it a lot more than business.

Stephenson eventually intends to pursue a legal career.

I think [majoring in history] changed the way I look at the world, Stephenson said. I find it a little bit more applicable to my daily life than what I would learn in finance. My history classes have taught me how to look at the world through, like, more of a critical lens.

Grant Kulberg is a senior graduating with degrees in geography (emphasis on cities and migration) and political science.

Originally I was going for computer science, Kulberg said. I'm a transfer from community college; I went to North Seattle here ... I took humanities, I took political science and geography courses, and they just immediately clicked with me in a way that computer science classes just weren't.

Kulberg switched to political science, and then transferred to UW to pursue that program.

I think it was last summer when I added on the geography major, Kulberg said. It was mostly because I had already taken a bunch of geography courses. Geography has been my best subject for as long as I can remember, from elementary school even. It felt really good to finally just embrace that and to find out I was pretty much on track to graduate at the same time with a new major, even though I was halfway through another one.

Before college, Kulberg moved to Seattle as a contractor for the Google campus, with goals to eventually work at Microsoft.

During that time at Google, there were a lot of factors that led me towards political science, Kulberg said. In 2019 I was a part of the unionization push at Google, at least in the Seattle area, and we were able to win a contract for the Seattle metro area.

Kulberg wanted to continue with labor rights work with his political science degree, but found that the courses were better suited for students who wanted to be lawyers or go into politics. This led Kulberg to search for courses that were more aligned with his goals.

Once I started taking geography courses, I started realizing that some of those opportunities were more prevalent within geography, Kulberg said. And since then, a lot of my career goals have shifted towards public sector service, more of developing and improving things within government. I am really focused on transit and/or housing.

Kulberg is 28, making him older than many of his graduating class. He believes that waiting to go to college helped him achieve his goals in the long run.

If I had gone [to college] earlier, I think I either would have stuck it out with computer science, or dropped out completely, Kulberg said. I was in the culinary industry for 10 plus years, I've done some of the worst jobs imaginable as well, and I think that has really influenced me to think about the things that affect the everyman.

Angela, the last senior I interviewed, is a comparative literature major who switched minors during her college years. She started out as a Russian literature minor.

I literally went to university being like, I know that I like two things. I like reading Slavic and Eurasian history and literature, so not just Russia, but all the Eastern and Central European, Central Asian [literature], Angela said. I also knew that I really liked sci-fi, but I was not going to be a STEM major. So I took Russian literature courses.

She felt as though the choice was random, and was embarrassed to tell people her minor. After her 100-level Russian professor took a leave of absence to write a textbook, she found the classes more difficult with the new professor, and decided to make a change.

I met someone who I started dating who studies ACMS (applied & computational mathematical sciences), Angela said. He was like, Instead of trying to do a Russian minor, do a data science minor, because if you think about it, it's not that different from the analytical or observation-based work that you do in literature.

Angela found more and more intersections between literature and data science.

Data science or critical data studies, which is what more of what I do, is not really dissimilar to literary studies, Angela said. If you think of the text as data, and you're performing that kind of analysis and forming these connections and thinking of the broader significance, thats what you do when youre trying to put together an analysis based on the data collected.

Angela says that the data science minor has opened doors for her career-wise, and she wants to work with philanthropists who tend to need lots of data analysis.

She also took lots of science fiction courses, and wrote her English honors thesis on the genre. She emphasized that not everything at university has to contribute to a future career.

Angela said her key takeaway was to not feel like she had lost anything by switching minors.

Regretting past experience, it doesn't make any sense to do that, because you just build upon past experiences; that's life, Angela said. Prioritizing doing what you like I think that's what motivated all this. I know not a lot of people can afford to do that, but I'm glad that I had the chance to just have fun with it.

No matter the path they had to take, these three students found ways to make their time at UW fulfilling. Eventually, you find a way to make it meaningful whether you open up career options you had never thought of, or major in something youre passionate about.

Although not every major guarantees you a job or wealth or status, there is something valuable to pull from in every pathway. There is no shame in taking a windy, twisted road to your degree. The key to your future could lie around any corner.

Reach writer Samantha Ahlhorn at specials@dailyuw.com. X: @samahlhorn

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The evolution of dreams | Grad Edition 2024 | dailyuw.com - Dailyuw