By Talia Rowe | Copy Editor
Everything about college is awesome.
You’re living on your own or with your friends. Classes are interesting, until they’re not. And it’s always a good idea to stop at Shorty’s before or after class.
If there are so many things that make college great, it’s curious why the majority of us students are so stressed out. Test anxiety is a major issue, along with the inevitable doom of rising tuition prices.
But there is an important question we should be addressing, one that keeps most of us up at night: the daunting question of “is this really what I want to be doing for the rest of my life?”
According to a 2025 article by the Student Research Group, around 80% of college students switch their majors. This can happen for a multitude of reasons, but the majority of these switches happen within the first two years of school.
By the time you get to your third year, you should have a good knowledge of what you want to be doing post grad. If this is you, congratulations; you are very ahead of most college students. If this is not you, don’t panic, it is completely normal.
Your junior year is considered the most academically rigorous in the average four-year degree plan. For most students, this is when the general education classes officially switch into specialized major courses, which can be a good or bad thing.
A lot of the times, when students reach their major specific courses, there is a sense of relief knowing that the classes they are taking are exactly where they want to be. The other students might feel a sensation of fear — the fear of wondering if they are making the right decision with their major and if they are in the right place.
An article written by Red Bank Psychological Services describes this fear as the “junior jitters.”
Junior year is when you start to feel the pressure of becoming an actual adult. The thoughts of graduation are closer than you think, and thinking about your last summer internship will start to stress you out. A lot of the pressure that arises can be from self-doubt or from comparison to your peers.
Everyone has that person in their life that seems like they have it all figured out. They have their next internship lined up, potential job offers or graduate school opportunities planned, and they seem to know exactly where they will be five years from now. It’s almost impossible not to compare yourself to that person when you feel like you just started figuring out what you want to do. Well, I have good news, my friend: You are not alone.
If you find yourself comparing your life to someone else’s, take a step back and remember that you have your own journey. We can often spend so much of our time worrying about what everyone else is doing that we forget to do things for ourselves and our futures.
Feeling uncertain is very natural because, let’s face it, life is uncertain. Everything that brought you to where you are now was built on uncertainty. It’s a good thing to be worried about your future because it ultimately shows how much it matters to you.
So, if you’re lying awake at night asking yourself that daunting question, sit back and remind yourself that you have time to figure things out. That’s what college and your 20s are meant for. Take a deep breath. I promise you’re doing better than you think.
