College is stressful. I thought the more time I spent doing homework and going to class, the less I would stress. I was wrong, so very wrong.

I am now one credit from being a senior, and I think I’m more stressed out than when I was a freshman. It’s not the massive amount of homework, part-time jobs or crumbling social life that’s making me lose sleep – it’s my major.

I keep thinking in three semesters, I’ll be in the real world. I’ll have a real job and real bills. I keep thinking, what if I hate my real job?

College is the place where young adults come to pick out a major, and simultaneously, pick out a life.

I wonder how I’m supposed to know what I want to do with the rest of my life when I’m only 20 years old. I wonder about that a lot. I freak out, cry and have mental breakdowns thinking I’ve picked the wrong major.

Ask my friends, mom or boyfriend, they’ve all heard me consider switching my major to studio art, English, visual communications design or music. It’s not that I don’t like writing, it’s that I don’t know if I’ll always like writing. I’m 20 years old; I still have a potential 50 to 65 years left on this planet. Do I want to spend all those years writing?

I thought I was alone in this whole mess of choosing what I should do for the rest of my life. A lot of my friends in college know what they want to do. They have a set major and are getting things accomplished.

It wasn’t until I posted a blog that I realized a lot of people are going through the same types of problem. A friend I hadn’t talked to since high school graduation read my post. She told me that she went through the same dilemma I had, and she would probably go through it again. She also said a few of her friends in Toledo are having the same problem.

That got me thinking, who else out there is freaking out about choosing the wrong major? And better yet, who else out there doesn’t know who to talk to about choosing the wrong major?

A lot of the people I talk to about changing my major tell me that I am too close to graduating to change my major. Sometimes they tell me that I’m going through a phase. Still, others don’t say anything at all and brush me off like I’m not even speaking. Those people are my favorites.

I wish there was a way to know if I’m making the right decision, but there isn’t. I have only myself. Other people can’t tell me what to do with my life, no matter how much I want them to.

I think I am supposed to be in journalism. If I wasn’t, I would have changed majors by now instead of complaining about doing so. Even if I’m not supposed to write for a living, I can always go back to school.

A few things I do know for sure are that I will freak out about the future, I will call friends crying and I will wake up in the morning and go to class acting like none of it ever happened. What will be different is that I know someone else out there is doing the exact same thing.

Sarah Lelonek is a junior magazine journalism major and a columnist for the

Daily Kent Stater. Contact her at [email protected].