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Don't sweat the small stuff...words to live by

By Sarah R. Smith '05

Many of us can remember the last exam we had to stay up all night and cram for, or the paper we waited until the day of to write (for some of us that happened this week), and we give up an entire day and night's worth of sleep to push ourselves to the limit to achieve that grade we yearn for.  Especially when it comes to senior year, college students are swamped with that final thesis and the final projects that are primarily based on our major and the work we've done thus far.  However, how many of you have given up just as much as your time for a class that wasn't slated for your major, but an extra course that you took to fulfill a minor or elective?  Is our time being used logically in this last phase of our undergraduate academia careers in a crucial time where focus is key?

Students choose minors for a number of reasons, some want to grasp a better understanding of a certain subject but they don't want to base their entire degree on it, while others want to fine tune their degree when they have a broad major (such as communications).  Whatever the reason, students need to take some factors into consideration before they commit themselves to another “mini major.”  Minors are beneficial to some because they give your degree a specialty that you can take with you when you go on to grad school.  Others however, like economic majors taking basketweaving as a minor, need to weigh the time that will be spent on both to make sure they're not utilizing all their time and effort into a minor that won't benefit them in the least at the end.

“My minor compliments my major, and the things that I have learned from taking my minor classes have enhanced the skills that I find essential for my major,” says Stephanie Burrows, a Utica College senior public relations/journalism major with a writing minor.  Some majors and minors do fit together like a puzzle, and the time you spend on both meshes together because you're essentially doing the same things.

Some majors and minors don't really coincide though.  Utica College senior Erin Desautels, is an English major with a human rights advocacy minor.  “I wanted to be a writer and chose human rights advocacy so I could have something to write about,” says Desautels.  “The topic really interested me, but the minor was extremely time consuming and a lot to pursue on the side.”

Minors do have a distinct purpose in the higher education realm and after declaring one, you  take on another miniature course of study, and you have to look at it as that little chunk of classes that you're signing up for could be a huge chunk less of your time that you'll have available.  For some it will look great on your transcripts if you've planned ahead and found that you'll have a higher acceptance rate into grad or law school if you take on a certain minor.  But for many others, they take a minor that distracts their goal and vision, and they worry too much on the little stuff, rather than giving all their attention to the prize at hand-that diploma.

We know that college is all about time, time that many of us don't have enough of, so unless truly necessary to your professional course plan, don't jump into another playing field when you've already got a packed seat game in another.