I DECLARE BANKRUPTCY!! by Aiden H. '28

This coming Tuesday, the major declaration form is due for freshmen.

What follows is the very long and detailed crisis I had in picking my major, organized by what I considered, in a roughly chronological order:

Course 8 (Physics)

Okay I never seriously considered physics while at MIT, but in sophomore/junior/early senior year of high school, I told everyone that I was going to major in (astro)physics, which I don’t necessarily regret? I think I had a lot of fair reasoning behind thinking I wanted to major in physics–I’ve always loved math, and space has been my weird nerd thing since I was young and declared Neptune the greatest planet as I put the sticky stars on my ceiling.

Then I took AP Physics C: Mechanics and quickly realized that I do not like physics at all.⁠01 I actually don't despise 8.02 (Physics II: Electricity and Magnetism) right now, but I wouldn't push it as far as saying enjoyment. It was actively the worst I have ever felt about myself academically, and I learned that the learning curve and extensive background knowledge to go from general physics to anything astronomy-applied is far to great for me to care.

Nonetheless, I did apply to some schools as a physics major. Funnily enough, I didn’t apply to MIT as physics, and it was one of the “prestigious” schools that accepted me. It’s as if even the others knew that physics wasn’t for me lol.

Course 20 (Bioengineering)

Bioengineering was the other main track I shifted to after the physics-debacle. This also made a fair amount of sense and isn’t that random. I took AP Bio senior year and really liked it, and in middle school Bio was always my favorite/most-interested-in topic. Half of it was all the cute little cell drawings and fun words like “golgi apparatus”, but I think the upfront helping-others mission in all bio-adjacent fields has always resonated with me and something I could see myself doing that is at least a little noble and important.

I wasn’t super sold on the engineering part though. I’ve always seen myself as someone who is more interested in learning about things than making them, so engineering seemed like a long shot. I had no interest in medical technology in the same way that I have no interest in electronics or mechanical engineering–fields that feel very structurally similar to bioengineering. But knowing very well I wasn’t going to go pre-med or do a PhD, bioengineering felt more useful as a bachelors than pure bio.

Course 6-7 (Computer Science and Molecular Biology)

I remember sitting at a debate tournament in Colorado looking through all the MIT majors out of curiosity, when I stumbled upon the strange beauty that is 6-7. I instantly called people I knew to tell them I knew what I wanted to do. I felt like it would allow me to doing something in biology that isn’t dissecting mice or using X-rays or whatever.⁠02 okay maybe I still don't know a lot about what actual jobs look like And like that I thought I was fine!! Like I decided once and for all what I would do!

It is strongly appealing because it doesn’t have that I-will-spend-the-rest-of-my-life-rotting-under-the-fluorescent-lighting-of-a-lab feeling, but going most of my freshman year thinking about declaring 6-7, I was hit with an equally devastating feeling: I-will-spend-the-rest-of-my-life-straining-my-eyes-and-hunching-my-back-over-my-computer. I still heavily considered 6-7, but with more and more time to ruminate over the class list, I noticed I like the sound of the major a lot more than the work itself. I like the idea of using stats for biology more than I do actually sitting doing and coding the programs themselves. I like the sound of taking classes like “Intro to Algorithms” or “Machine Learning in Molecular and Cellular Biology” much more than I do actually doing any of those psets for hours on end with no gratification.

The crisis continues.

Course 18 (Math)

Sorry! I like math! Sue me!

I was taking 18.02 and noticed that the beginnings of college math felt a lot like high school math–take a subject with a name, learn a bunch of new operations and ways to do math, and then take tests on those routine operations and problem solving skills. Then I find out that a math major is proofs and I immediately lost interest. I don’t want to learn LaTeX, or why numbers exist, or how to connect those dots from Good Will Hunting. I like doing integrals though–so something with a little math or at least math class requirements is important.

Course 17 (Political Science)

This has been the crisis of a lifetime. I’ve talked about this before, but I was very very very intensely not a “STEM kid” growing up. I heard “you should be a lawyer” 10000000x more than “you should be a doctor” or whatever the equivalent is. Most of my friends ended up in poli-sci. I kept this attitude with me throughout high school, with essentially everything on my application and resume pointing towards a traditional humanities path in something like public policy/political science/international relations. And the issue is I am very interested in all of these things! But a part of me knows that I do not enjoy poli-sci classes as much as STEM or an alternative arts/humanity. I also know that I do not want to go to law school.

After a lot of deliberation,⁠03 frantically calling everyone I know in poli-sci I realized that I don’t want a job that comes out of a poli-sci degree, but instead anything I would want to do in the public sector would be related to public health policy or researching the effects on international relations on other issues (like health, education, science, etc.). All of these jobs can come with a background in a technical field, basic statistics/CS, or just any degree and a passion for it.

Part of me still feels weird not being a poli-sci major, but if I chose wrong I can just get a masters.

(and getting into politics with a stem degree is easier than ever, so potentially Hurst 2048🇺🇸🦅)

Course 11-6 (Urban Science and Planning with Computer Science)

This came post- the course 17 realization™ when I wanted to look at ways to use STEM for a more traditionally government/public job.

Then I remembered I don’t like coding enough and that’s where this major crisis came from in the first place.

Course 6-14 (Computer Science, Economics, and Data Science)

I found out that Jane Street quants can make $300,000 as a starting salary and I had a lapse in judgement that put me into a very capitalist mindset for like 3 hours, and then I remembered I don’t like coding that much and I don’t think the economy is real and I don’t want to work on Wall Street and I hate everything about business culture.

(but I’d still take the salary)

Course 21T (Theater)

Do I become attached to very intense pipe dreams very fast? Yes. Was one of those that I could drop out and become a famous actor? Also yes.

Then I started taking 21T.101,⁠04 Introduction to Acting am having a bad time, and realized that if I were to become an actor, a major in theater-adjacent classes from a tech school probably won’t change that trajectory too much.

Course 1 (Civil and Environmental Engineering)

This lasted about an hour, but every now and again I feel the crushing guilt of climate change weigh on my soul and I feel guilty that I’m not using the resources I have to become a part of the solution.

I would hate it a lot though–next!

Course 5-7 (Chemistry and Biology)

Not a shocking choice, but like I said before, I’m not super sold on pure sciences because I’m not all that interested in research/academia as a career path. Realistically, it wouldn’t matter that much, and this along with any bio-related major would be enough to put me in biotech. I think the lack of math/applied technology is the main drawback for me, but the pure chemistry classes (like “inorganic chemistry” as opposed to the chemistry classes of ChemE like “fluid mechanics”) are interesting to me.

As of now, I keep 5-7 as my backup in case I have a crisis because a lot of the classes I’ll have to take anyway, and it’s close enough to what I want to do that it won’t be an issue.

Course 21L (Literature)

I’ve felt a very strong pull to commit myself to more than the bare minimum HASS⁠05 Humanities, Arts, and Social Sciences requirement. With poli-sci and theater out of the running, though, I’ve returned to the idea of literature.

I said a lot in high school that I wanted to double major in STEM and non-STEM because I didn’t want to neglect one or the other. My answer to this was always literature. I loved reading and writing as a kid, and literature classes were largely my favorite in high school.

I haven’t declared 21L yet, though, because part of it feels “useless”? Which is a common dilemma at a strongly tech school like MIT–everyone likes and takes HASS classes, but I feel like those can only be side quests. If I’m going to be a scientist, why stress myself out with the major requirements when I can just take a couple literature classes and call it good? I don’t know if I’ll declare the major, or a minor, or a concentration, but nonetheless I want to take a lot of lit classes while I’m here.

Course 10B (Chemical-Biological Engineering)

As I continued to grow weary of the amount of CS coursework with 6-7, I started thinking about other majors that could still put me in biotech. I have a couple friends who are planning on 10B, and the lab my UROP is in is a ChemE lab, so I had a lot of people to bounce questions off of (and also encourage me into switch to 10B).

The bio track is exactly the same as the other bio majors (20, 6-7, and 7), so even though it’s technically ChemE, I’m not changing the amount of biology I would be taking. I also would much rather take more chemistry-esque classes than learn about the “Mathematics of Computer Science” or “Algorithms”.

I also feel like the major is a lot less restrictive than the box I put myself in with 6-7. I am still interested in bioinformatics/comp bio, but I could easily go down that path with a biochemical background (like my UROP mentor and everyone in the lab I’m working in). However, if I back out and decide I want to do lab work or some other industry project, I’m not stuck to the computational side.

As of now, this is the major. 🎉

Maybe Course 7 (Biology)?

At this point not shocking. I still wouldn’t do only biology, but I noticed that all of the classes needed for course 7 are already covered by 10B except for one. If I get bored and take the extra course 7 class, I might declare the double just to have it (assuming I don’t major in anything else, which is statistically⁠06 statistics here meaning vibes unlikely).

***

If that felt like a lot–it was! It’s the weight bearing down on most of the freshman class right now.

I feel like a lot of people, both close to me and not, have a perception that because I go to a prestigious school and have always done well in school that everything should naturally fall into place–that I should feel confident that I’m meant to be here. I sometimes feel guilty that I don’t. Not in an imposter syndrome, I-don’t-deserve-to-go-here way, but in an I’m-still-very-lost-like-every-other-college-student way. I wasn’t born with the same intrinsic passion that a lot of my peers have. I haven’t known since I was three that I really wanted to be an engineer and that this was my life’s greatest dream come true. A lot of the time I still feel like a student who just went to college because that’s what most people do, and what else am I gonna do?

This is why picking a major has been so hard and fueled by indecision–I’ve had to realize⁠07 notably not accept, but we'll get there lol that I am not foaming at the mouth at the idea of having a job, that if you told me I won the lottery or became famous overnight, I probably wouldn’t continue this career path because “I love it so much” and “it’s my life’s purpose”. I just have to pick something I like enough to be a person with a job–which is normal, just not necessarily at MIT.

I need to find a way to separate whatever passions I can find and whatever professional stuff I have going on. This feels like an impossible task for me though. I’ve always taken everything to such an extreme that I end up hating it because it just becomes work. I can’t just be in a play, I have to be a theater major who goes on to be a famous actor. I can’t simply like to play piano, I have to drop out and go to Juilliard and become a Grammy winner. I convince myself things don’t matter if I don’t give my everything to them. What’s the point if it could be better? What can simply be dad lore and what is my actual career path? Does it intrinsically make something worse if it isn’t my career and just a hobby? Who knows! I probably won’t find the answer in my chemistry classes though, and that’s fine.

***

tl;dr i thought a lot about a lot of majors

p.s. don’t even ask how many different minors I’ve said I’m gonna get.