College comes with so many decisions, but one of the most pretainate decisions is what major you’re going to choose. Many people hold the weight that whatever major you choose will chase you the rest of your life. This rings true to some extent, but I believe we need to stop the stigma of wanting freshmen to choose a major as soon as they step foot on campus. I, like many college students, ended up changing my major from what I originally declared freshman year.
When I started college I knew I wanted to go into communications, but I didn’t know what area of communications. I decided that I would try communication-based organizations to see where I would best fit. I initially started with the student newspaper because I had always enjoyed writing in high school. I specifically joined the sports section because it was what I was most interested in. Just a few months in, I knew that I loved it. I decided to specify my major to journalism.
I stayed a journalism major throughout my freshman year, but along the way I had some experiences that changed my perspective. As a sports journalist, I got very close to the sports information directors I was working with on my respective beats. I realized that I really liked the idea of being the middle-man between sports journalism and sports business. During that same time, I talked to my former editor and realized that she was actually a public relations major for the same reasons I was considering other options.
Public relations was the perfect medium in the sports industry for me. It gave me the ability to continue writing, which I loved, and wouldn’t waste all of the knowledge I had learned from my journalism classes. It also showed me a whole new side to the sports industry. It gave me more business centered opportunities such as research. I changed my major to public relations my sophomore year and it was such a great decision for me. Since then I have been able to research how sports were impacted by COVID-19 , create a press kit, build a campaign on wheelchair basketball and more.
Public relations isn’t just a sports major of course. It is something that can benefit so many career paths. To me, it’s the epicenter of the communications major. If you’re interested in communications at all, I would highly encourage you to look into public relations. I truly think it can open so many different career opportunities in multiple industries. It’s very versatile and I think that is something so beneficial to young college students. It makes them a better candidate for jobs coming out of college because, like me, you’ll do so many different things and you’ll be well rounded in your field.
Overall, public relations holds so many opportunities for those who aren’t fully sure what they want to major in. My best advice is to choose something that will give you lots of options not only in your college career, but further down the road. I believe public relations does that and that’s why more people should declare it as their major, even if it’s later in their college years.