Emerging Majors
January 18, 2012
Today, students often hear the following career advice: “follow your passion!” The thought behind this is that if you do what you love, your job won’t feel like “work.” And because you’re passionate about it, you won’t mind putting in all the required hours for possibly low pay.
If you are lucky enough to have discovered your passion during high school, then by all means think about how you can turn that passion into a career. For example, if you love to cook, consider all of the different ways cooking can become a profession: chef, restaurateur, personal chef, caterer, food critic; as you can see, the list goes on and on. Stepping back from your ultimate goal, your next step would be to consider what types of education you will need. For instance, if you want to be the chef/owner of a restaurant, in addition to cooking classes, you will need business and marketing skills as well as general accounting. So, for an undergraduate major, you probably will be interested in business. Although being a business major sounds worlds apart from being a chef, by employing this reasoning, you can see why it would stand you in very good stead.
If, however, you haven’t yet found your “passion,” you may be wondering how to begin selecting a major. You can work backwards, so to speak. Begin by selecting a job in a projected growing field and then choose your major based upon your career goal. According to the U.S. Department of Labor, over one-half of the occupations with the fastest growth are in the medical field. This is not to say that you should be a doctor – many different occupations comprise this field, including biomedical engineers, home health aides, personal/home care aides, medical scientists, physician’s assistants, skin care specialists, biochemists and biophysicists, athletic trainers, physical therapist aides, dental hygienists, veterinary technologists and technicians, dental assistants, medical assistants, physical therapist assistants and veterinarians to name a few. Other careers that are projected to be in high demand in the coming years are network systems and data communications analysts, financial examiners, computer software engineers/applications, self-enrichment education teachers and compliance officers (except agriculture, construction, health and safety and transportation). Of course, nurses, auditors/bookkeepers/accountants and teachers always are in demand. For more information about growing industries, go to the Department of Labor’s website.
One word of caution about college majors, however. The most valuable asset that you derive from college is an ability to think, reason and research. These traits will serve you well no matter your chosen profession. In the podcast series “Ear on Careers,” many of the professionals interviewed tell the same story: their success in their career is unrelated to their college major. For example, a hospital president was an engineering major; a magazine publisher was a biology and math major; a lawyer was a psychology major; and a federal agent was a communications major, just to name a few. To listen to this podcast series, go to www.EarOnCareers.com.
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