The Art of Double Majoring

If there’s anything I’ve learned so far during my three semesters at Concordia, it’s that sometimes, decisions are really hard to make. Now, I’m not talking about the type of decisions that involve what you’re going to eat in Janzow or when you’re going to take time to walk over to the music building and practice piano. No; these decisions are more of the ones that come from questions like, “how am I going to get in all the credits I need before I graduate?” or even “what am I going to do with my life after college?”  

After a few different considerations during high school, I settled on majoring in psychology around the end of my senior year. Choosing a major was easy enough...until I realized that I also had to decide what kind of career I wanted after college. I’ll spare you the details, but since then, I’ve played a little bit of Career-Choice Parkour that’s ended with me as a college student pursuing a double major in psychology and biology with a pretty specific career path in mind. 

Double majors are cool (and often super useful), but they sure do involve a lot of planning. You need to take all the required courses in not one, but two academic programs. You also need to coordinate classes in your schedule (which is especially hard if your two majors are in different departments like mine are!) and you need to figure out whether you’ll need to complete any internships. That is a lot to think about.  

My two majors mean I spend a lot of time studying a lot of cool but sometimes very different topics. I might be learning about how chromosomes work at ten in the morning and how group dynamics work at two. Then I go back to my dorm at night, where I might be doing anything from writing a paper or taking notes on how to conduct research to making fun little molecules undergo fun little reactions on Mastering Chemistry.  

I’m not kidding when I say that my planner has been my best friend this year. It’s an indispensable part, at least for me, of the double-major experience, and helps me keep straight all the homework I need to do, the labs I need to attend, and when I have readings due. There is also the teeny tiny fact that I may be taking a lot of credits this semester and just have a lot to keep track of in general, but...we don’t need to talk about that right now.  

Anyway, immersing yourself in two different fields, especially if they involve majors in different departments, might make you feel a little stretched between worlds sometimes. I ask myself almost daily: Am I a science person? Am I a psychology person? Can I be both? The answer to that, at least in my opinion, is absolutely. There’s a reason you’re doing a double major, and it’s probably not because you just can’t make up your mind. In fact, I'm guessing it’s the opposite – you have such a specific career path in mind that one major might not fulfill all your undergraduate goals! 

All in all, having two majors means that you’ll need to do a lot of coordinating – trust me when I say that building a schedule is so fun (not!) -- but you’ll also form unique relationships, possibly in multiple departments, and gain so much knowledge. Plus, those moments when you can integrate knowledge from one field of study into another are incredibly satisfying.  

It’s almost an art form, you know, shaping your schedule for the school week around the classes you have to take and the places you have to go, and painting a picture that (hopefully) gets clearer and clearer with every passing semester of what your career path may be. Art isn’t always easy, but when you step back and look at the final product after making that last brush stroke or pencil mark, it’s so rewarding to see everything you’ve accomplished put together as a cohesive whole.  

If you’re double majoring, it might feel like the odds are sometimes stacked against you. My advice for those of you in this situation would be to keep pushing through. It might not be easy right now, but it will get there. And once you graduate, take a deep breath and a step back, you’ll be able to see the whole of the masterpiece you painted during your time at Concordia.  

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