With the potentially overwhelming number of majors to choose from and an almost universal interest in multiple subjects, many students at Scripps, myself included, struggled with choosing a major. Whether it’s deciding to make an interest a major, minor, or extracurricular, most people need a bit of time before officially declaring their major. Luckily, no one at Scripps needs to declare anything until the end of their sophomore year, so we all have three semesters to decide what our academic interests are. Students can also change their majors and minors around until their senior year, as long as they have enough time to complete a senior thesis by their desired graduation date. That being said, a decision does need to be made so here’s a bit on how I made my decisions for majors.
I ultimately decided to dual major in Psychology and Theater and combine my majors into a singular thesis which I’m currently working on. But when I first came to Scripps, I had a number of interests that I had to narrow down. Since middle school, I’ve known that I wanted to study psychology in college but throughout high school, I developed an interest in my English classes and I absolutely loved my AP Art History class. I’ve also been involved in theater my entire life, but mostly saw it as a hobby until my sophomore year at Scripps. My first semester in college, I chose to take intro to psych and a basic acting class along with Core 1 and a then required writing course. Both the psych and theater classes fulfilled GE requirements and I got to meet now close friends. I planned that specific acting class to be the only one that I took but I loved working with my peers and professor. My attachment to the department carried over into the next semester as I continued to act in shows and meet students, faculty, and staff. What made me decide to major in theater, surprisingly, was my faculty advisor who taught psychology. It was her encouragement to pursue all of my interests to the fullest capacity to major in theater, and I haven’t looked back since.
While that sorted out two of my four major interests, I still had two other subjects that I wanted to learn more about. Although it is possible to have two majors and two minors, it’s not all too recommended by Scripps, so I had to find some other academic outlet to pursue art history and English. Then entered Core and studying abroad. After taking Core 1 in a student’s first semester at Scripps, students have the ability to choose which Core 2 and 3 classes that they want to be in, and have a number of options to choose from. Luckily for me, I was able to take joint art history and English classes for both Core 2 and 3. Each class sought out to combine the disciplines and explore the connections between them. I was able to discuss the material with my classmates, analyze art, and write papers about my interpretations of everything. It was a great way to stay involved in the two subjects, meet other Scripps students, and learn under professors I never would have met without the opportunity. It was also in those Core Classes that I realized my interests in art history and English could be satiated in those classes.
Then in my junior year at Scripps, over a full year after finishing Core 3, I was able to study abroad and continue studying art history in the most ideal way possible: traveling to Florence, Italy (the birthplace of the Renaissance) and see the paintings I loved the most in real life. I was able to find a program that surprisingly had absolutely everything that I was looking for, providing psych, theater, and art history classes along with staying in a home stay, learning the Italian language, and exploring the city. My timing could have been better (I went abroad in Spring of 2020 :/), but I was able to live in the city I spent years learning about and wanting to visit. It was the perfect way to culminate my interest in art history and left me fully satisfied in my understanding and connection to the subject without distracting me from my main academic interests. Through study abroad I was truly able to do it all.
I hope this long-winded story is helpful in creating an image of what academics are like at Scripps and a possible path to figuring out what to major in. If anything, I hope that you can finish reading this blog post knowing that people usually don’t come into Scripps fully knowing what they’ll major in and sticking to that plan, and that there are multiple ways to pursue your interests beyond majoring in them. Especially through GE classes, people can discover that a subject they thought was going to be their sole interest isn’t as interesting as they once thought, or that their newest passion could be complete surprise to them. There’s no right way to figure out what you want to do in college and in life, so Scripps tries to create an environment where you can make those discoveries and decisions in your own way on your own time.