Planning for Success: How To Make The Most Out of Your Major
By Cailin Hale
Many students enter college looking to increase opportunities in fields of employment. Finding the right major for you and working to obtain the right skills with necessary for increasing future opportunities. Southern Virginia University provides majors that can help on this search.
There are majors at Southern Virginia that are more popular than others. Provost Jeremiah John would say that psychology and business are probably the most popular majors and as for the reasoning behind that, he “hasn’t completely figured it out.”
He attributes the popularity partially to having great professors in those fields, but mostly because psychology and business really fit with what many students at Southern Virginia are interested in. “Psychology students are interested in helping other people,” John says. Students who choose to major in psychology typically have interests centering around mental health and helping those with it, in addition to some having experiences with those types of things themselves. They’re interested in how people work, and most often, they want to use that knowledge to go into future careers of helping people, pursuing careers such as counselors and psychiatrists.
Business is another very popular major at Southern Virginia. John says students that are drawn to this major are “responsible students interested in a successful career, and see business as having a lot of career potential.” Most often, these types of students see this major as the gateway into a stable career that will enable them to take care of their families.
Many students view the more popular majors as very clear options for a good career, but they’re not the only good majors one can pick. Less popular majors fall under humanities, such as philosophy and classical studies, as well as mathematics. These majors hold equal value with the more popular options, and can lead to just as interesting and fulfilling career opportunities. “Humanities are smaller, but are good majors to prepare for good communication skills. …They’re very good for grad school,” John says. They can prepare one for many different jobs, medical school, law school, and other graduate programs.
The main concept that John emphasizes is the importance of learning hard skills for your career, regardless of what your major is. The knowledge of these skills will set you apart in the job market in a way that nothing else will. This applies to all majors. “Marketable psychology majors have an understanding of research, statistics, quantitative studies, and mathematics. This is the hardest part of the major; don’t shy away from it,” John emphasizes. Similarly, he says that business majors need to focus on learning hard skills in spreadsheets, numbers, sales, marketing, and accounting. Students who work on getting those hard skills are the most successful in the workplace. Learning hard skills is key for any major.
John doesn’t believe there will be any new majors introduced to Southern Virginia in the near future, and there are none in consideration at the present moment. “When we adopt a major, we want it to be part of a great educational experience,” John says. “We wouldn’t have the major if we didn’t think it would set you up to have a good career.”
He does think that the school might consider adding more concentrations, however. Concentrations are useful in having a more centralized education that can prepare for specific jobs or graduate programs. John thinks that concentrations in marketing, sales, accounting, and design could be possible additions, dependent largely on student interest.
“Ask people who’ve had really successful careers, and they have a lot of enthusiasm about their education. They work really hard. …There’s not just one type of major for success,” John says. “What leads to the biggest success is to plan and prepare and be realistic about what it takes to achieve your goal. Approach it with a really good plan. The earlier students plan things out, the better off they’ll be.”
