It’s all too common of a story: a high school senior changes their intended major every week, ends up choosing a random one and finds it neither fulfilling nor enjoyable in college.
This outcome likely happened due to a lack of access to meaningful exposure to their interests. In a University College London study, researchers found people have natural biases to stick to their current behaviors and activities instead of exploring other possibilities. Early-career students should intentionally spend time on varied activities, building competency in and exposure to many fields, rather than immediately hyperfixating on a single activity.
“The number one thing is to keep an open mind,” said Mazen Hassouna, an electrical and computer engineering junior who transferred majors after being undecided his freshman year. “Explore all the different tracks you have available. Ask your friends about what their majors are, what they’re doing and maybe even attend some of their classes.”
Learning about and attending your friends’ classes and projects can be a great way to explore your own interests. Additionally, UT provides students with resources for academic exploration, such as Wayfinder, which offers students tools to learn about various professions.
According to a study from Queen Mary University of London, an interdisciplinary knowledge base is beneficial, even for experts and specialists. By having a foundational level of knowledge in a variety of fields, you can draw on these skills and apply them to your own field.
In a 2005 commencement speech, Steve Jobs discussed an example of using knowledge from a different domain in his own life. While at Reed College, Steve audited a calligraphy class and later applied his learnings to help create the typography in the first Macintosh.
“I learned about serif and sans-serif typefaces, about varying the amount of space between different letter combinations, about what makes great typography great,” Jobs said. “None of this had even a hope of any practical application in my life, but 10 years later, when we were designing the first Macintosh computer, it all came back to me. And we designed it all into the Mac.”
Although an expert’s insight would be more nuanced than someone with basic knowledge, being a generalist can prove invaluable. A host of connections from different fields can be just as useful.
For example, according to Vignesh Sella, PhD candidate in the Computational Science, Engineering and Math program and former AI/ML resident at the Google Moonshot Factory, cross-collaboration of ideas happened across teams at Google Moonshot as well. One of their factory projects was to build internet delivered through beams of light and another was to build autonomous farming vehicles. As Sella said, teams like these, which seem radically different, often might have engineers pitch in to help with the other team’s specific engineering challenges.
This type of cross-pollination of expertise is helpful, but it can only happen if the expert is previously exposed to the other domain.
In college, it’s easy to feel lost and confused when deciding what to focus on, and the pressure to commit to a single choice can feel overbearing. Still, especially as early-career college students, branch out and try many different paths. In the long run, it will help you find your calling and may come in handy in its own right.
Go out there and explore. Talk to your friends, attend their classes and involve yourself in projects. Try as many different and unique academic experiences as you can.
Dasgupta is a computer science junior from Austin, Texas.
