I am in the second semester of my fourth year at Oberlin. Right now, most of my brain space is occupied by what every other, second-semester fourth-year student is concerned with right now: the job search. I am also a humanities major; specifically, I’m a Politics and Creative Writing double major. One of the first questions I get asked when meeting someone new is, “What are you going to do with those majors?” I usually respond with one of the fairly obvious paths forward: law, journalism, working for a nonprofit, or going to grad school and working in research.

But I would like to take the time to argue against the idea that your choice of major completely determines, or should determine, the course of your career path. Admittedly, I do find it difficult to resist the immediate emotional response that comes with reading headlines like, “These college majors have the best job prospects — and they aren’t what students expect,” “‘A black hole’: New graduates discover a dismal job market,” and “New Grads Join Worst Entry-Level Job Market in Years.” 

It’s easy to worry: What if my Politics and Creative Writing majors are never going to get me a job? Maybe I should have majored in Computer Science instead. Or wait, no, not Computer Science — a headline from The New York Times last year reads, “Goodbye, $165,000 Tech Jobs. Student Coders Seek Work at Chipotle.” What majors lead to reliable entry-level jobs that are safe from recessions, safe from layoffs, safe from AI? Nutrition sciences? Aerospace engineering?

This is, of course, an unhealthy mindset. But there is another kind of anxiety that comes with reading headlines like these. If you are an Oberlin student studying a creative pursuit, you have no doubt fantasized about being able to pursue your creative work as a profession. When people warn you that, as a 2024 essay by the scientist Erik Hoel argued, “Making a living as a book author is as rare as being a billionaire,” you might worry that you’re actually not committed enough to your creative work. Maybe you started playing the viola at 11, and now you feel you’ll never be good enough to play with the New York Philharmonic — if only you started playing at nine instead. Or maybe you’re an aspiring author preparing your first fantasy novel for publication, and a single bad workshop is enough to make you feel you’ll never hit the big time. If only you had started writing when you were four, and had parents who were personal friends of Rick Riordan, and, and, and…

To people applying for jobs this spring, both of these anxieties are both clearly unhelpful. But it’s worth discussing the common root of the mindset that you should choose the safest possible major and the mindset that you shouldn’t hope to pursue your creative work as a profession. Although they are unhelpful, they are still very difficult to ignore.

Implicit in both mindsets is the assumption that your major  should set you on a path for success in a particular profession. Other second-semester seniors might interject here to say that, of course, one of the functions of college is to set you on a path for success in the job market. I would agree. However, I don’t believe that is the only goal of a college education, and maybe it’s not even the most important goal, although certainly a college education should open professional doors for you.

That said, I do not believe that the choice of a major should also mean the choice of a profession. We can all think of people who have known since they were six that they wanted to pursue a particular career. Most people aren’t like that, though. I’m certainly not. I have always been interested in thousands of different things; that’s why I have found myself at a liberal arts college with a double major in Politics and Creative Writing, and it’s why I spend my nights and weekends composing music, attending theater rehearsals, and singing in choir concerts. I would love to pursue a job associated with one of my majors as a profession. But, as uncertain as I am about the future, I am glad that I have been able to study many different things at Oberlin, instead of pigeonholing myself into a profession I’d be unhappy with or convincing myself that my Creative Writing major obliges me to become a world-renowned writer.

I haven’t found a job yet, and I’m not fully sure what I’m going to end up doing. But I think a more helpful mindset for the job search is to think very broadly about what kind of things you enjoy doing, rather than limiting your thinking to considering what specific skills you have. It’s true that it takes more effort to look for jobs this way. But it has the advantage of widening your horizons and allowing you to consider jobs you would never have otherwise thought of. Console yourself with the knowledge that the Bureau of Labor Statistics recognizes 867 different occupations. It really is a big world out there.