By Amber Gomes

I have never posted in a blog before… I’ve read some (including the other CLA ones) and it seems like they are all really witty or just outright clever in some way. So when we talked about writing blogs as Ambassadors my first thought was “Crap! How am I going to be that funny?” and my second thought was “What in the heck do I write about?” Eventually I decided… “Who cares about being funny? It’s more important to be honest right?” So then I moved onto the real problem… what in the world do I want to say to you guys?

My first thought was the importance of getting involved; be it a sport, intramurals, a club, student government, a fraternity, sorority, honor society or what have you. You make lifelong friends when you decide to do something social with your free time. Obviously studying is important, I mean we are in college that’s kind of a key element of the whole scenario, but balance really is essential to mental well-being and you should enjoy your time here too! But everyone you meet is going to encourage you to get involved so I figured a blog on it would only be redundant. So I decided that I want to share something that may be just a little bit cheesy but is seriously really important.

Listen to yourself!

Cheesy? Yes! Cliché? Quite possibly. But REALLY!!!! DO IT!!!!!

Statistics say that college students change their majors four times on average; I actually never did (though I did change one of my minors) but I do know others who have. For example my friend, let’s call him Reginald (because Bob is overused), spent the first three years of his college career as a civil engineer. We were talking the other day and he was telling me he just switched his major. Apparently Reginald had always thought the classes he was taking were kind of lame… but he kept telling himself “They are going to get more interesting! They are going to get more fun!” and turns out they never did. So after three years, and who knows how much money, he finally decided to make that major switch. Reginald is now officially a Mathematics major. Personally I don’t see how that could be any more fun than Civil Engineering BUT the point is that it is not my opinion that matters. It’s not your teacher’s opinion, your advisor’s opinion, your friend’s opinion or even your parents’ opinions! It is your opinion!

Don’t set yourself up to hate school by taking classes or sticking with a major you don’t like! You have that whole big broad range of classes to choose from as you fill your bacc core… choose ones in different fields! I’m an International Degree Political Science major with minors in Spanish and Psychology (yes I love my Liberal Arts) but I know because I took the most random bacc core classes that I also LOVE history and medical anthropology and I know from other random bacc cores that cultural anthropology is not necessarily my thing. I know I hate math but that public health classes and biology can be super interesting. Oddly enough it’s even kind of fun to know about different kinds of rocks as a result of my geology 101 class (at least my little brother thinks its cool). I won’t say that I enjoyed or even cruised through all of my classes but I can honestly say I have learned a lot about myself as a result of trying new things. And my best piece of advice to you, the youngest of the beaver nation is to be active in your education! After all, it kind of does help to determine your future!