When you head into a new school year, try to pick out your courses for the first time in college, or need to finally declare a major to graduate on time, you may be confronted with the fact that you don’t want to learn “just one thing.” You may see peers with a clear trajectory for one very specific discipline or career goal, but you know that your learning interests simply don’t fit into one category.
Often in college, people talk about the interests that they had in high school, but couldn’t keep up with in college because they didn’t have enough time, or there were no opportunities for it at their school. As someone with a highly interdisciplinary major ("What even is leadership studies?") and three minors, I’m no stranger to having interests that span more than one department and finding it nearly impossible to fit them all into your classes and extracurriculars without an overwhelming amount of work.
However, there are ways to manage diverse courses without overrunning yourself with work; just because your interests are in different departments does not mean they are completely disconnected:
1. Look out for interdisciplinary classes when choosing your courses.
Depending on your university, many professors may co-teach a course that spans different disciplines or areas of study. For example, in my senior year of undergrad, I took a course called Dance for Social Change, which combined looking at dance as a form of protest with the history of protest in Puerto Rico and Latin America more broadly, allowing me to engage both from my background in dance and my focus on Latin American, Latino, & Iberian Studies. Taking these courses will allow you to explore multiple interests without having to double up on the work of multiple separate courses, maintain some space and flexibility in your schedule, and perhaps even provide a unique perspective on the topics and subjects of interest to you.
2. You can bring different interests to existing classes.
Even if you have strict course requirements for a given degree track, that does not inhibit your ability to incorporate some of your interests that aren’t automatically built into the course. You can choose an essay topic in English that brings in your interests in media and technology or the impact of climate change in an economics assignment or project. Even if you are focused on one subject for your degree, you can take your own interdisciplinary approach and still learn about other topics you care about.
3. Look for opportunities to learn outside the classroom.
Often, professors will do research that spans multiple areas of study, such as science and music, or history and psychology. Even if you are unable to take courses in a subject of interest, finding professors doing research you are interested in and asking to assist them can not only develop your knowledge skills related to multiple interests simultaneously but can also offer you research experience that can be used down the line after college.
4. Extracurriculars are your friends (literally).
Getting involved in clubs and organizations connected to your interests can allow you to explore them outside the pressure of your academic studies, and give you a different social and learning environment that may better suit your learning style. These are also great spaces to build relationships with others with shared interests, which can improve not only your learning experience but also your social one. Making friends in these spaces allows you to learn from one another and potentially find lifelong friends that you can continue to learn with even after college ends and you leave these extracurricular spaces.
In summary
Investing in multiple areas of interest during your academic experience can help you to build knowledge and skills that can continue to serve you beyond school, as you apply to jobs or to graduate school. Learning how to incorporate different learning interests also helps you build soft skills that can be crucial to job and career opportunities following college. You don’t have to miss out on a topic you care about simply because of the structure of college. You can build into your educational experience the topics that matter most to you, which may also help you to feel more engaged and invested in your studies. The possibilities for your academic studies can often feel very narrow regarding the degree written on your diploma, but that doesn’t mean you can’t pursue multiple interests and explore them in interesting and exciting ways throughout college.
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