Nothing is Wasted

by Kimberly A. Barchard

Sometimes students tell me they are taking courses they don’t like, that will prepare them for careers they aren’t interested in, but they don’t want to change majors because they don’t want to waste the courses they have taken. In my opinion, nothing is wasted. The things we have done and learned become a part of who we are.

I am a climber, a cyclist, and a swing dancer. I am a poet, a trombonist, and a singer. I am a writer, a teacher, and a dog owner. I am a psychologist and a statistician. All of these are part of who I am right now, even though I am not currently doing some of these activities.

I haven’t climbed for a long time. However, I climbed pretty seriously for six years, climbing indoors two or three times a week and sometimes going on trips to climb outdoors. I had my own shoes, harness, rope, and helmet, a few carabiners, jams, and slings. When I moved to Nevada, I left behind my climbing partners. I also left behind the granite I was used to, moving to an area with crumbly sandstone I didn’t trust. I continued climbing off and on for the next few years, but mostly indoors. Eventually, I stopped going. It’s now been years since I put on my harness and shoes.

I went through a period of uncertainty. When I hadn’t been climbing for a year, I still called myself a climber. When I hadn’t been climbing for two years, I wanted to call myself a climber, but wasn’t sure I could justify that claim. When I hadn’t been climbing for three years, I grimaced and said, “I used to be a climber.” But then I had an experience that made me change my mind. I now know I am a climber, even though I don’t currently climb.

What happened was, a couple of years ago, I started doing research on censored data. Data are censored if we have incomplete information about their values, for example, if we know that someone is at least 55 years old, but we don’t know their precise age. One afternoon, I spent a couple of hours explaining censored data as best I could. When I was finally satisfied, pleased with a job well done, I stood up from my computer. Only then did I realize that my explanation wasn’t useful: I had explained censored data in terms of rock climbing.

I was trying to explain one esoteric idea – censored data – in terms of another esoteric idea – rock climbing. Not many people care about censored data, so few people would be motivated to read my paper. But also, not many people know about rock climbing, so there aren’t many people who would be able to understand my explanation. With that combination, my explanation wouldn’t be useful to anyone: No one who would read it would understand it.

But the fact that I spent a couple of hours on this explanation and that I myself understood censored data in terms of rock climbing, that was revealing. I climbed so much that it changed my brain, how I see the world, how I process new information. Whether or not I ever climb again, I am a climber. Similarly, I am a swing dancer and a cyclist, even if I don’t dance or cycle again.

As an undergraduate, I took courses in nine different departments. All those courses changed me. They gave me a different perspective. I approach new topics in different ways than I would have, had I only taken psychology courses or had I focused on some other area, like linguistics or computing science. Moreover, I approach new topics in different ways from the people around me, even if they have the same major and minor as me, even if they have the same job title. Our experiences differ and our experiences matter, making us all unique individuals. I approach my job differently because I took courses in linguistics and computer science and because I’m a climber, dancer, and dog owner.

Students sometimes tell me they don’t want to change majors because they don’t want to waste the courses they took. However, if you’re taking courses you don’t like, you might be less motivated to attend class and study and consequently less likely to finish your degree. Indeed, two academic studies have shown that students who change their major are more likely to graduate (DeAngelo et al., 2011; Reardon et al., 2015). And graduating is important: It opens up career opportunities that would otherwise be unavailable and helps people earn substantially higher incomes, more than making up for the cost of attending school (Abel & Deitz, 2014). Moreover, employers care more about skills than majors (Association of American Colleges and Universities, 2021). Employers care that you can write and think. They don’t care if your university courses required you to write and think about psychology or history.

About a third of college students change their majors (U.S. Department of Education, 2018). Their previous courses have not been wasted. Nothing is wasted.

Resource

To learn more about how your unique experiences influence who you are and how you spend your time, see my WPA presentation on Becoming Yourself.

References

Abel, J. R., & Deitz, R. (2014). Do the benefits of college still outweigh the costs? Current Issues in Economics and Finance, 20(3), 1. https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=2477864

Association of American Colleges and Universities. (2021). How college contributes to workforce success: Employer views on what matters most. Hanover Research. https://dgmg81phhvh63.cloudfront.net/content/user-photos/Research/PDFs/AACUEmployerReport2021.pdf

DeAngelo L., Franke R., Hurtado S., Pryor J. H., & Tran S. (2011). Completing college: Assessing graduation rates at four-year institutions. Higher Education Research Institute, UCLA.

Reardon, R. C., Melvin, B., McClain, M.-C., Peterson, G. W., & Bowman, W. J. (2015). The Career Course as a Factor in College Graduation. Journal of College Student Retention: Research, Theory & Practice, 17(3), 336–350. https://doi-org.ezproxy.library.unlv.edu/10.1177/1521025115575913

U.S. Department of Education. (2018). Beginning college students who change their majors within 3 years of enrollment. NCES 2018-434. https://nces.ed.gov/pubs2018/2018434.pdf

Kimberly A. Barchard is a Professor in the Department of Psychology at UNLV and is the Director of the Interactive Measurement Group. She works to empower lab members to accomplish their personal and professional goals, particularly through the development of leadership, research, and organizational skills.