When I was little, like all young children, I was asked all the time, “What do you want to be when you grow up?” Pretty much every time I was asked, my answer changed. A lawyer, a veterinarian, a pastry chef (specifically pastries) and a Disney princess actress at Disney World were frequent fliers on my list, but the list itself was about eight miles long. If you are familiar with the computer game “The Sims,” I have always essentially had the Renaissance Sim aspiration; I wanted to be good at everything and all at once.

Obviously, it is impossible and expensive to get the degrees necessary to do every profession, but try telling that to an excited nine-year-old. My childhood ambition was fine up until my senior year of high school when I needed to actually pick a college and a major. In my small high school, I hadn’t found anything I was really great at, so when I found something I slightly enjoyed — mass communications — I snapped it up and decided to major in it.

College is the ideal time for people to discover who they are, what they are meant to do and where they are meant to go; with about one hundred majors just here at Iowa State, there are plenty of opportunities to try out a few classes before settling into one that feels right.

Unfortunately, there is a limit to the amount of classes you can try before you need to make a choice, and some majors have a lot of prerequisites before you can make it to classes with the actual content. Though the college experience is marketed as “limitless,” four years isn’t enough time to try everything. You really can’t “do it all.” The major-choosing experience is more of a choose-your-own-adventure: lots of branching paths, but each path has limited options.

Now, as I’m reaching the end of my run at Iowa State, I’m fairly satisfied with my adventure; however, I’m still left with a little voice in the back of my head that’s asking, “Did you do the right thing?” I’m finishing my mass communications major — I did like it, and I am still a headstrong nine-year-old in my bones⁠ — but I found a real love with criminal justice from an elective class, so much so that I chose to double major in it and continue to law school. But I can’t help but wonder what my college experience would have been like had I chosen to do animal science or agricultural business like my siblings.

During your first semester, try as many classes as you can. Talk to your adviser if you have any inkling of wanting to try a new class; it’s what they are there for. Don’t feel any shame about changing minors six times; I did! Don’t wait until the semester is over to switch declared majors or minors; there is no minimum, maximum or penalty for doing so. With every semester that passes, your choose-your-own-adventure path options get smaller and smaller. Be adventurous, but be mindful of these limitations.