This advice may go against other advice, but it’s a tactic that has served me well: in making early-career decisions, such as your choice of major, always ask yourself which choice preserves future options.
For example, let’s say you are considering a major, and you are equally interested in Architecture, Literature, and Engineering as careers.
Under my analysis, I would ask, which of these choices preserves the most options?
If you choose to pursue a degree in Literature, it is unlikely that you will be able to parley those skills into any kind of job in Architecture or in Engineering.
If you choose Architecture, you will find it very difficult (though not entirely impossible) to switch into Engineering for a graduate degree. However, you may find that you can try to pivot into some kind of Literary existence more easily.
If you choose Engineering, you’ll find that Architectural schools will be eager to accept you for a graduate program, and the difficulty of switching from Engineering to a Literature program will probably be equal to the difficulty of switching from Architecture.
So, under this analysis, Engineering is the choice that preserves the most future options. At the point of choosing your college major, you’re too young to be screening off future possibilities. Unless you’re completely gung-ho about Literature, and feel a real certainty about what you want, it’s best to keep more cards in your hand and let yourself make that exclusionary choice when you’re older and wiser.
You may find that reading the classics in your spare time and writing a little bit of fiction now and then more than satisfies your Literary impulses, in which case, you’ll be glad you didn’t commit yourself to it as a career.
Conversely, if you commit to Engineering and find that you hate it, it’s always easier to pivot to the other options.
As a general rule, things that are perceived as more difficult are easier to pivot away from, because the admissions gatekeepers for the perceived-as-less-difficult options will find you impressive due to where you’re coming from. This heuristic is valid at all levels, for example, if you decide to go the Engineering route, choose the subdiscipline of Engineering that everybody else says is the hardest, scariest one. You can always punt to one of the easier ones if you don’t find it to be a good fit, but it’s much harder to go uphill from where you start.
It’s not so important what you work on, so long as you’re not wasting your time. Work on things that interest you and increase your options, and worry later about which you’ll take.
Suppose you’re a college freshman deciding whether to major in math or economics. Well, math will give you more options: you can go into almost any field from math. If you major in math it will be easy to get into grad school in economics, but if you major in economics it will be hard to get into grad school in math.
Flying a glider is a good metaphor here. Because a glider doesn’t have an engine, you can’t fly into the wind without losing a lot of altitude. If you let yourself get far downwind of good places to land, your options narrow uncomfortably. As a rule you want to stay upwind. So I propose that as a replacement for “don’t give up on your dreams.” Stay upwind.
As a complement to this advice (which I think is good), it’s important to make sure you still explore. Don’t be so worried about making sure you do the thing that maximizes optionality that you’re afraid to fail and don’t try things.
So if you think you should study math rather than econ (as per Kaj’s comment), then start with math as your default, but make sure to also take an econ class to see if you’re so much more interested in it / better at it that it’s worth it to specialize.
This advice may go against other advice, but it’s a tactic that has served me well: in making early-career decisions, such as your choice of major, always ask yourself which choice preserves future options.
For example, let’s say you are considering a major, and you are equally interested in Architecture, Literature, and Engineering as careers.
Under my analysis, I would ask, which of these choices preserves the most options?
If you choose to pursue a degree in Literature, it is unlikely that you will be able to parley those skills into any kind of job in Architecture or in Engineering.
If you choose Architecture, you will find it very difficult (though not entirely impossible) to switch into Engineering for a graduate degree. However, you may find that you can try to pivot into some kind of Literary existence more easily.
If you choose Engineering, you’ll find that Architectural schools will be eager to accept you for a graduate program, and the difficulty of switching from Engineering to a Literature program will probably be equal to the difficulty of switching from Architecture.
So, under this analysis, Engineering is the choice that preserves the most future options. At the point of choosing your college major, you’re too young to be screening off future possibilities. Unless you’re completely gung-ho about Literature, and feel a real certainty about what you want, it’s best to keep more cards in your hand and let yourself make that exclusionary choice when you’re older and wiser.
You may find that reading the classics in your spare time and writing a little bit of fiction now and then more than satisfies your Literary impulses, in which case, you’ll be glad you didn’t commit yourself to it as a career.
Conversely, if you commit to Engineering and find that you hate it, it’s always easier to pivot to the other options.
As a general rule, things that are perceived as more difficult are easier to pivot away from, because the admissions gatekeepers for the perceived-as-less-difficult options will find you impressive due to where you’re coming from. This heuristic is valid at all levels, for example, if you decide to go the Engineering route, choose the subdiscipline of Engineering that everybody else says is the hardest, scariest one. You can always punt to one of the easier ones if you don’t find it to be a good fit, but it’s much harder to go uphill from where you start.
Paul Graham has similar advice:
As a complement to this advice (which I think is good), it’s important to make sure you still explore. Don’t be so worried about making sure you do the thing that maximizes optionality that you’re afraid to fail and don’t try things.
So if you think you should study math rather than econ (as per Kaj’s comment), then start with math as your default, but make sure to also take an econ class to see if you’re so much more interested in it / better at it that it’s worth it to specialize.