Think back to the time when you first began to contemplate college. Do you remember the specific thoughts that you had? Were you excited about the idea? What began to draw you into the web of college life? What compels you to be here at AUM now?

Throughout this book, you will read about strategies for effectively learning, reading college texts, taking notes, managing your time, managing personal finances, and more. This chapter challenges you to really think about the why. Why did you decide to attend college, and why did you decide to declare a certain major?

We all have life goals, and we discussed in Chapter 4 how to set more “doable,” achievable ones. Some just happen to be clearer to us than others. You may think about them in terms of finances, such as to land a job that allows you to be financially independent, or perhaps your goals are more personal, such as to get married and have a family. They might be specific goals: to pay off student loans within three years of graduating from college, or very general: to do well. Regardless of what your goals may be, they are all important because they influence decisions that you make today and that will affect your future.

Identifying your motivations and goals is important because you are then better able to prioritize your thoughts about the future and to identify new, promising options that you may not have previously thought about. Beware of accepting as your own dreams that others may have for you, for example, “I want to finish college to make my parents proud” or “I want to complete my degree because my boyfriend thinks that I can get a better job.” These are not necessarily bad dreams, but they will lead to genuine fulfillment only if they are your dreams as well.

Identifying Your “Why” for Attending College

Ever since you were a child and first definitively stated, “When I grow up, I want to be a ___________” you have been making decisions in order to achieve certain dreams. Most likely you are in college now as a step toward fulfilling a lifelong goal or dream. The truth is that very few of us are still passionate about our childhood career dream. As we grew up, we discovered new options; were influenced by people whom we met; or perhaps even learned that being a fireman, nurse, circus clown, pro baseball player, or princess is not all that we thought that it might be. Your life dreams are probably still evolving today and should be embraced. For most people, the motivators behind the dreams change very little over time. If as a child you wanted to be a princess so that your kingdom would have a kind ruler, then today you may want to be a teacher to help children learn. Both of these dreams are rooted in a desire to help others. Essentially what you are doing is identifying the “why” behind your goals and dreams.

Knowing your “why,” that is, why you want to become a ___________, is necessary for not only prioritizing your plans for the future, but also gaining inspiration concerning directions that you may not yet have charted. Ultimately, your motivations for being in college align you with paths to actualizing your goals and ambitions. Check out the activity on the next page. In the right column of the table, you will see some common reasons that students give for attending college. In the left column, check all the reasons that are true for you, and in the middle column, try to rank your top five reasons for attending college.

 Activity

Everyone has distinctive reasons for wanting to go to college. Now that you have explored your reasons for attending college, you need to start thinking about what you will study once you get there.

Academic Planning

How to Choose a Major

Throughout your college experience, you will receive lots of advice from people inside and outside the university. To ensure you make the most of your college experience and avoid wasting time and money as a result of incomplete or incorrect guidance, be sure to meet with your academic advisor regularly to discuss your concerns. AUM students are assigned an academic advisor based on their major, which means all students – yes, you too! – have been assigned a dedicated university official who advocates, supports, and looks out for their best interests.

Choosing a major is one of the most important decisions you’ll make in college and may impact your career options after graduation. More importantly, your declared major will play a critical role in the growth and development of the person who is ultimately responsible for their college success: YOU! If this decision seems intimidating – you don’t have to worry. Your academic advisor is here to guide and support you throughout the process.

Generally speaking, majors fall into two categories: (1) those that prepare you for a career in a specific job or profession – such as nursing, elementary education, accounting, or social work – and (2) those that focus on the intellectual mastery of a certain topic or field – such as biology, computer science, anthropology, or economics. Using the chart below, which degrees not listed in this paragraph do you think could go in Academic Program A? What about Academic Program B? Which one is yours?

Students first tend to think about majors when they think about careers. They often say, “I want to be a _____, so I guess I should major in _____.” This can be true if your chosen career has a defined path of entry (you should explore this), but the majority of all college degrees fall into the Academic Program B category. Why? Because a college degree remains one of the most effective ways to overcome barriers to employment and vastly increases your earning potential throughout your lifetime. Still, earning a degree requires deep commitment of time, money, energy, and other resources, as well as dedication to learning, improving, and stretching your mind and skillset. To maintain the motivation to finish, begin the major exploration process assessing your personal interests, values, and abilities in collaboration with your academic advisor.

•         Interests are the things you do for fun and would do for free if given the opportunity, such as writing code, learning about other cultures, or solving complex problems. Pursuing a major that aligns with your interests increases your motivation by allowing you to pursue that which you enjoy, which means you’re less likely to burn out and more likely to develop mastery. Consider this: would you pay for the experience of doing something you disliked for 5-6 years in hopes of earning a certificate that would entitle you to a career in doing the same miserable work for the rest of your professional life? Don’t be afraid to learn new things, but also don’t ignore the interests that have brought you happiness for most of your life. They lead you to passion and purpose.
•         Values are deeply held personal beliefs about what you must have in your life for it to be worth living, such as money, family, stability, power, creativity, independence, religion, or prestige. Pursuing a major that aligns with your values increases your happiness, satisfaction, and self-esteem. You don’t have to compromise who you are to get what you want out of a college degree. When you reflect on your choice of major (or career), whose voice is confirming that this is the right choice for you? Is it yours?
•         Abilities are innate traits or talents that influence our capability or aptitude. They differ from skills, which are learned behaviors that can be developed through training or experience. Although you should always be improving your skill set, having a knowledge of your abilities is essential to remaining grounded, setting realistic goals and expectations, and maximizing your potential for success. It’s important to dig deep when considering your abilities. Don’t let your ego create blind spots, and don’t let the fear of failure stop you from doing what you know you can do. (Pro-tip: did you know that some AUM majors don’t require mathematics? Ask your advisor for more details.)

Consider the following: Do your interests, values, and abilities align with your declared major? How confident are you that the major you have chosen is right for you? Because college is a series of learning experiences, you’re sure to doubt yourself a time or two (or three!) along the way. If you’re unsure about your major, know that you’re not alone. Results of a 2017 study conducted by the U.S. Department of Education indicated that 30%—approximately one out of every three—of undergraduate students will change their major at least once within their first three years of college. Study results indicated as well that 9%—or approximately one out of every 11—of undergraduate students will change their major more than once during college. While it’s normal to change your mind, begin the major exploration process early on for your greatest chance at success.

Exploratory Majors

All AUM students with less than 41 credit hours can declare Exploratory as their major. As an Exploratory student, you’ll pursue a degree while working with a dedicated academic advisor in the Office of Central Advising to explore your interests, values, and abilities, along with careers, trades, and other programs. Exploratory students graduate on time and have access to the same resources and scholarships as students who declare a major. To connect with the Exploratory Academic Advisor, email advisinghelp@aum.edu.

Bachelor of Interdisciplinary Studies

AUM’s Bachelor of Interdisciplinary Studies is a unique degree because it allows students to build their own degree plan based on their interests. BIS students learn to integrate insights from various academic disciplines in order to think critically and creatively about complex ideas and problems. If you are interested in two fields of study, but you’re not sure which to pick, the BIS degree might be for you! If you have already accrued many credit hours from a different university or in a different degree program, you can integrate those credits into an Interdisciplinary Studies degree and continue pursuing what interests you now. The BIS degree also offers students the option to declare one of four concentrations: Health Studies, Leadership and Professional Studies, Teaching and Learning, and Liberal Arts and Social Sciences. These concentrations provide the opportunity to take courses from different departments in a broad area of study. Recent BIS graduates have been accepted to various graduate and professional programs, like Teaching English as a Foreign Language and Nursing, and are working in many exciting careers in healthcare, education, business, and more.

Pre-professional Majors

A pre-professional student is someone who plans to pursue education beyond undergraduate studies to become a healthcare, legal, or other specialized professional. At AUM, you can declare a pre-professional major, such as pre-nursing, or a pre-professional concentration, such as pre-health sciences, but neither of these “pre-” designations lead to a college degree. Keep in mind that if you wish to enter professional school at the undergraduate level – such as AUM’s College of Nursing and Health Sciences or College of Education – you’ll need to meet the minimum admission requirements to apply for the degree program by the required deadline (these are different from AUM admission requirements and deadlines). Failure to meet these requirements at the time your application is due will result in you having to change your major before you can continue with your studies. In the College of Nursing and Health Sciences, you must not only meet the minimum requirements for admission, but also have a competitive GPA to earn a seat in the program. Students who encounter roadblocks in professional school pathways can still find rewarding careers by declaring majors like Psychology, Social Work, or Interdisciplinary Studies.

The Office of Central Advising has a dedicated Pre-Professional Support Team for all AUM students with interests in pre-professional majors. Email advisinghelp@aum.edu to connect with the team for job shadowing/internship information, student success advising, assistance with professional school applications, and academic advising for pre-nursing, pre-health, and pre-engineering majors.

Majors Related to Work in Higher Education

Have you ever considered a degree in higher education? If you desire to teach, research, and/or administrate at the two-year or four-year level, chances are you’ll need an advanced degree to qualify for employment. Fortunately, you’re surrounded by AUM faculty who have traveled the same path and can answer any questions you may have about selecting graduate schools, defining a research interest, writing a Statement of Purpose, and other processes related to graduate study. Feel free to approach AUM faculty directly with questions about graduate study, or connect with your academic advisor for assistance.

Completing Your Degree

To earn a college degree, you must complete general education requirements (commonly referred to as the core curriculum), electives, and major requirements. As you traverse the curriculum, you’ll find that some courses need pre-requisites, co-requisites, or other requirements before you can add them. Furthermore, you may want to add a minor, concentration, or double major. To remain on track to graduation, meet with your advisor regularly. For information on how to locate your academic advisor or how to make an advising appointment, please visit https://www.aum.edu/academics/advising/ or email advisinghelp@aum.edu.

Registration

Each semester, all students are required to meet with their advisor prior to registration for the following semester. Typically, students meet with their advisor in October to discuss Spring registration and in March to discuss Summer/Fall registration. Prior to meeting with your academic advisor for registration advice, do the following:

•         Prepare a list of your responsibilities outside of school that hinder your ability to attend class on a certain day and time, such as your scheduled work hours or standing meetings/practice times
•         Prepare of list of classes you’d like to take next semester by

o   reviewing your progress toward degree requirements in Degree Works (located in MyAUM) alongside next semester’s course schedule (located in Webster).

o   identifying areas of study that you would like to explore in the elective space in your degree plan.

•         Reflect on the current challenges you are facing personally and academically and let your advisor know how you plan to succeed or if there’s something they can help you with.

Course Scheduling Considerations

Prior to the beginning of a semester, it’s usually not a big deal to change your schedule. Once the semester is underway, however, you must pay attention to the number of credit hours you are enrolled in. Your financial aid, scholarship, veteran/military benefits, athletic and VISA eligibility, etc. can be greatly affected when you add, drop, or swap courses. Always check with your academic advisor before making a course change that negatively impacts your ability to succeed.

As an adult, you probably have lots more on your plate than just taking college courses. Family responsibilities, work, hobbies, interests, etc. often demand our time and attention. Remember to consider these things, particularly considering time, when choosing which courses to take. If given the choice between class time and meeting your obligations, you’re likely to choose the one that you can’t avoid. Since you won’t receive grades daily, you may not be aware of how much class you’ve missed or how badly your absences have impacted your progress. Other considerations you should make when scheduling courses are your required courses for graduation, academic abilities, course availability, desired areas of personal and intellectual growth, time to graduation, financial ability, and grade improvement policies.

Academic Advising

A common misconception of academic advising is that it exists primarily to help students register for courses. As you’ve read in this section, advisors spend much of their time helping students navigate the academic policies, procedures, and hidden curriculum of higher education. You can expect your advisor to be familiar with all AUM’s student support services, resource offices, faculty and departments related to the majors they advise, AUM technology, enrollment processes, curriculum changes, and co-curricular opportunities. Advisors work with university officials on all levels to ensure you have the resources you need to succeed, so don’t be shy to seek their help when you need it.

Peer Advising

The Office of Central Advising has Peer Advisors on staff who are eager and ready to assist you with any process-oriented issues related to advising, including registration. To schedule an appointment with a peer advisor, email advisinghelp@aum.edu, call 334-244-3969, or visit Taylor Center 145 during scheduled working hours.

Career Exploration

A job: Yes, it’s something that you would like to have, especially if you want to pay your bills. A job permits you to enjoy a minimal level of financial security. It also requires you to show up and do what is required of you; in exchange, you are paid. A career involves holding jobs, but it is more a means of achieving personal fulfillment. In a career, your jobs follow a sequence that leads to mastery, professional development, and personal and financial satisfaction. Attaining a career requires planning, knowledge, and skills. If it is to be a fulfilling career, it requires that you bring into play your full set of analytical, critical, and creative thinking skills to make informed decisions that will affect your life over both the short and long terms.

What Do You Want to Do When You “Grow Up?”

The U.S. Department of Labor defines in the Standard Occupational Classification System more than 860 occupations, and new occupations are being created at an ever faster rate. Just 10 years ago, would anyone have imagined the job of a social media marketing specialist? How about that of a competitive chef? As new careers develop and older careers morph into almost unrecognizable versions of the original, it is okay if you aren’t able to pinpoint exactly which occupation or career will be your lifetime endeavor. However, it is important to identify as best as you can the field in which you want to develop your career because this will to some extent dictate your major and course selections.

The process of exploring career options can be a lot of fun, as it allows you to discover a world of possibilities. Even those students who have a pretty clear idea regarding what they want to do should engage in this process because they will discover new options as alternatives and, occasionally, a new direction even more attractive than their original choice. The Career Development Center at AUM divides the career development process into the following four steps:

1. Assess: Are you an analytical problem solver, or are you more a creative type? Are you a Type A personality? Are you an introvert? Staff in the Career Development Center will ask you several questions, but also will do a lot of listening as you discover together how your personality traits fit within various fields. Your search for a meaningful, rewarding career starts with reflecting and knowing yourself. Identify your values, interests, and skills; create SMART Goals; and consider the relationship between our major and your desired career.
2. Explore: What can you do with your major? The Career Development Center staff will assist you with researching and choosing career options that align with your values, interests, talents, and goals. You may even have an opportunity to observe professionals in the workplace as you develop your own career action plan.
3. Prepare: During this stage, it’s time to “work your plan” by gaining experience through involvement and internships. Build your portfolio and sharpen the skills that will give you the edge in competing for jobs after graduation.
4. Engage: Now, it’s time to put it all together, apply what you have learned during the earlier stages, and launch your job search strategy. Refine your resume, build out your LinkedIn profile, network, research potential employers, and participate in mock interviews so that you will be ready for the real thing.

Think about developing your career as if you were working in a start-up venture because, in a sense, you are. The product that you are developing is yourself as a professional. While your focus during your college years is primarily on product development, during this period you also need to “seed” the market so that when the product is ready, i.e. when you receive your degree, the market will be ready to accept you. If launching a career means landing your first post-college job, then the time to start preparing is now, not six months—or even less—before you graduate.

Set personal goals to guide you during your exploration. Especially since career planning is an ongoing, long-term process, it’s important to set short-term, attainable goals to progress toward a fulfilling career. These should comprise simple, everyday steps that keep you moving in the right direction. Examples include “investigate metallic arts sculpture as a business by Friday” or “make an appointment with the UNIV Student Success Program or Career Development Center by Tuesday.” As you proceed along the journey of investigation, decision-making, networking, selection, and application, these goals will become even more important.

Are You Ready for a Test Drive?

One of the most common frustrations that many first-time job seekers experience is the realization that many jobs require, even for entry-level positions, some kind of hands-on experience. Relevant experience is necessary not only for qualifying for jobs, but also for providing you with a means to try out different jobs and build a contact list that will be valuable when networking.

So, how do you go about gaining experience when you haven’t completed your degree? Experiential learning, as we discussed in Chapter 2, may very well be the ticket to helping you gain experience before you have done so. At AUM, the Experiential Education & Engagement Center and the Career Development Center will be key resources to assist you with finding ways to get the hands-on experience that you need to stand out as an applicant on the job market. Additionally, you will begin participating in service learning, a key component of experiential education, in your UNIV class.

AUM’s Career Development Center utilizes the FOCUS 2 assessment (CLICK HERE) to help students begin the career development process. In your UNIV class, you will complete the FOCUS 2 and are encouraged to both save the results for your future reference and take your results to the Career Development Center to review them with a member of the staff. You also in your UNIV class will be introduced to O*NET (CLICK HERE). O*NET, which stands for Occupational Network, is a database of occupations compiled by the U.S. Department of Labor. If you can think of a job, then there is a high likelihood that it can be found on O*NET! One final resource that the Career Development Center uses is Handshake. Handshake is an easy-to-use mobile app that will help you find relevant jobs and internships and keep up with Career Development Center events. More than 300,000 employers, including every Fortune 500 company, uses Handshake as their primary recruiting platform. CLICK HERE to navigate to the webpage for the Career Development Center and to read more about Handshake.

As you engage during college in employment and internship opportunities, you’ll need to document them—and extracurricular activities—on a resume. A resume is, for the most part, a summary of your qualifications and experience. Just as a company invests resources to condense the essence of a product into a 30-second commercial, you’ll need to condense the essence of your experience onto one or two pages in a resume. Updating, revising, and finetuning it will become an ongoing process as you progress through your career, and it is not too early to prepare one. For tips and strategies concerning resumes, you can consult a staff member in the Career Development Center.

Dr. Seuss one wrote, “You have brains in your head. You have feet in your shoes. You can steer yourself in any direction you choose. You’re on your own. And you know what you know. And YOU are the one who’ll decide where to go.” This quotation sets the stage for the journey on which you’re embarking. Your journey may be a straight line that connects the dots between today and your future, or it may resemble a twisted road with curves, bumps, hurdles, and alternate routes. Regardless, your journey is yours, and you’ll need to ensure that you’re planning today for the future that you’re envisioning.

Three Questions to Unlock Your Authentic Career. (2014). Retrieved from https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vMiSf7LpFQE

Warhawk Wisdom:

Identifying your motivations for coming to college and selecting a specific major can seem daunting, especially when you feel pressure from loved ones or others to take an alternative path. You must, however, be honest with yourself about your authentic motivations and goals to get the most out of your college experience and to prepare for a meaningful, rewarding career—and life for this matter. To these ends, you must also cultivate curiosity about majors and related professional options that you had not previously known about or considered.

Continue Your Learning:

Beginning College Students Who Change Their Majors within 3 Years of Enrollment. (2017, December). Retrieved June 2, 2020, from CLICK HERE

Journal Prompts:

1. Who are you now?
   • What did you think you wanted to become when you were younger?
   • What do you think you want to become now?
   • What do the people around you tell you that you’re good at?
2. Who would you like to be?
   • What’s your vision for your future?
   • What elements of that vision are most important?
3. Who are you becoming?
   • What can you do to explore career options?
   • Which college experiences (Clubs? Internships? Service?) might help you explore your interests?