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With Fran Northcutt, Honors Adviser, Hunter College of the City University of New York
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Registration Again - and This Time It's Serious
HEAD Start
Time to open your dusty catalog, click on your Registrar's Web site, and sign up for an appointment with your favorite academic advisor: Registration is on the horizon! You're just a carefree freshman now, but when you take these classes, you'll be a lofty sophomore. You'll still have some room in your schedule for random, fun, or "exploratory" courses, but it's time to get a little bit more serious.

HEAD Lines
ASK YOURSELF:
  • How should my sophomore classes be different from my freshman classes?

  • Where do I want to be in terms of my writing?

  • What do I want to understand about the differences and similarities of the various academic disciplines?

  • What two or three possibilities do I really want to explore for my major?
Check your college's policies about when students are required to declare a major. Chances are, you and your classmates will declare sometime around next winter. And all of a sudden, the first question you ask at parties will shift from "Which hall do you live on?" to the classic "Hey, what's your major?"

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From Other HEADS
I WANTED TO BE AN ACTOR. I'm from a working class family and they don't know anything about the arts, and they were scared. They were like, "Get some kind of degree that will pay and then you can do the acting for fun." But I said, "No." I was scared, too, because I didn't know a whole lot about it. But I found there is work out there, and I really enjoy what I do now.

-- ADAM PENA
AMERICAN REPERTORY THEATER AT HARVARD


AT LEAST THREE-QUARTERS of my friends changed their majors before graduation. I entered Marquette majoring in international business, but switched during my sophomore year to a double major in economics and political science. I didn’t want to take the rigorous accounting classes required of sophomore business students, and I realized that you don’t need to major in international business to work with global commerce. Also, I planned to go on to postgraduate business school, where I’d gain exposure to this information when it was much more applicable for my career.

-- SAM WEAVER
MARQUETTE UNIVERSITY




Web Resources
UC Berkeley guides you through the exciting world of career fields: http://career.berkeley.edu/Infolab/CareerFields.stm

Occidental College helps you think about choosing a major: http://departments.oxy.edu/career/studentinfo/guidedecision.htm


HoH Tips
  • Are you lying awake at night stressing over what to major in? So unnecessary! There are plenty of people on campus who can help you figure things out. Many college counseling centers even counsel students through this process!

  • Have you been putting off an introductory general education requirement basically because you have no interest in it whatsoever? Better to take it next year when you're a sophomore than leave it until senior year. Because honestly, three years from now, do you want to be that senior sitting in a room of freshmen, learning about the Civil War or the basic structure of a cell? Um, no!
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