As the college search process picks up this fall and as many students begin to look at the colleges for the first time, I thought it was important to stress that you do not need to know what you want your major to be when start college!! Allow me to introduce Kelsey Sweet ’15: Communications and Media Major, Sports Marketing Intern at Naz, lover of all things Buffalo, and one of my very best friends. Kelsey started here at Naz as an undeclared major so I asked her to talk about what it’s like to start as an undeclared major.

It’s your senior year of high school. Everyone wants to know where you’re going to school and what you’re going to major in. But what if you don’t know? So what? I’m here to tell you it is okay. I was that kid, who had a school, but had no idea what I wanted to do and Nazareth was the perfect fit for that.

One of the top reasons as to why I chose to come to Nazareth was because I did not have a clue what I wanted to do. The campus is obviously beautiful, but it was a great fit for me because of all the options I had. The possibilities really were endless.

Fast forward to my senior year of college and I am now a Communication and Media major with Sports Marketing minor and I could not be happier. I figured out that this is what I wanted to do in three ways.

1. I went to Career Services. I took some personality and career tests and what not and they were so helpful. This kind of reaffirmed what I thought I was interested and good at and what possible careers I could look into.

2. I knew what I liked. I love people. Ask any of my friends. It’s all about K. Sweet and the homies. I love to meet new people and get to know them, so I knew I needed to pick a path that would set me up for success in that I would be interacting with people through my major and eventually future career.

3. I picked a course to take. After going to Career Services and reflecting on what I like, I decided to take a course within the core of the Communications and Media program and I ended up loving it and declaring that as my major my second semester freshman year.

I later added on my sports marketing minor when I realized that I could use my passion for sports and my new-found love of marketing through the Communication and Media program.

The search of finding a major isn’t always this simple and you may not figure out exactly what you want to do the first time around like I did, but you’ll get there. Try out different courses; sometimes you can tell the first day if you’re going to like the discipline or not. Whether you like it or not, you learn more about yourself and what you do or do not want to do. You don’t have to know what you’re going to do right away. Enjoy the ride, try new things, and simply do you.

-K. Sweet