I am a third year BSc. Computer Science major with a minor in Psychology. One of my hobbies is writing, and I thought that by creating this blog it would become a helpful resource to UBC students. During my spare time, I would often read blogs by other UBC students and that motivated me to record my own journey in my undergrad career. Just as they have helped me transition to university life, I want to help others do the same.
For those who are interested, I am now writing a (hopefully brief) history of my academic journey. If there's anything that I'd like readers to take away from this post, it's that discovering what you'd like to study is never a straightforward route. There's always bumps and even backtracking, but eventually you'll get to where you want to go if you keep trying. As someone who switched faculties and then majors, I've experienced that firsthand.
In high school, I was clueless as to what I wanted to study. I would take many quizzes online to see if my interests matched any careers or academic disciplines. I took Biology 12, Chemistry 12, Physics 12 and AP Calculus, just in case I wanted to study science. I was somewhat interested in the sciences, although I wasn't passionate to the extent of wanting to study any of them for the next 4 years of my life. What barred me from making the decision was that I couldn't imagine myself working in a lab (perhaps wearing a lab coat and goggles, while doing some kind of research). Thus, when the time came for me to apply for schools, I did not apply for UBC Science. Instead, I applied for Arts because it gave me the flexibility to plan my courses the way I'd like to as there weren't many strict requirements. As for my choice of school, I remember all the way back from when I was 8 that I knew I would want to go to UBC (even though I only had a vague notion of what a university was!)
In the first term of my first year at UBC, I took CPSC 110, the introductory programming course. At the time, I had absolutely no experience in programming before, but I learned that programming skills are valuable no matter what area you work in. The course became significantly harder as it progressed, but I decided to press on and work harder. In the end, it was my highest mark that term and that experience helped me set my future path - I was going to major in Cognitive Systems (COGS). One CPSC course was not enough to convince me to major in Computer Science as it only gave me a little taste of what it would be like. With only a little experience, I wasn't ready to make that leap, and Cognitive Systems helped me ease gradually deeper into Computer Science (plus, it seemed like a very interesting major if I ever spark an interest in artificial intelligence). To give you a brief background on it, Cognitive Systems is a multidisciplinary program that involves computer science, psychology, linguistics and philosophy. To major in it, you would choose a stream which happens to be one among its four disciplines, and you can get a Cognitive Systems degree from either the Science and Arts faculty. In the Science faculty, you can specialize in computer science or psychology, and in arts you can specialize in psychology, linguistics or philosophy. I switched faculties from Arts to Science as I wanted to specialize in computer science through COGS.
In my second year, I took COGS 200, the introductory COGS course. I was genuinely interested in some parts of it, especially in psychology, but for the rest of it I had the most difficult time listening to the lectures. My listening problem became so severe that I began to record the lectures, and it took a considerable amount of willpower for me to listen to the audio afterwards. This experience served as an indication to me that I had absolutely no interest in certain parts of COGS - specifically, linguistics and philosophy. Each lecture focuses on one COGS discipline, and I nearly groaned aloud when the time came for linguistics or philosophy lectures. Thus, I reconsidered my major. If I happen to like computer science and psychology, why not major in one and minor in the other? Or do a combined major? At least, at the time of my decision, there was no combined major in computer science and psychology (that is, one with a set number of required courses but you can always customize your degree by applying for a combined major with computer science and some other subject in the faculty of Science). But even if there was, there is an important distinction between psychology in the Arts faculty and in the Science faculty (the latter known as biopsychology). I happen to prefer psychology under the Arts faculty, and so the best course of action for me was to major in computer science and minor in psychology. I was hesitant to change my major, but after taking a few more CPSC courses I wanted to go through what that decision.
The more CPSC courses I took, the fonder I grew of them. Perhaps it's because they allow students more freedom to choose courses that they are interested in when CPSC students are in 3rd/4th year. As opposed to requiring certain courses to be taken, in 3rd year and 4th year they require "9 credits of 300-level CPSC courses" and "9 credits of 400-level CPSC courses". Currently, as a computer science major, I am content and I can't imagine majoring in anything else. I enjoy the logical challenges of programming and being able to create whatever I envisioned as an app, website, etc. To think that high school was only a few years ago... if my high school self knew what I was studying now, I can picture my past self to be pretty surprised.
If there are students reading this post who are confused as to what they want to do, all I can say to you is that it's completely natural. I've heard about 50% of students that enter university change their majors some time during their undergrad. If you are among those who aren’t sure what you want to major in, my advice to you will be to have courage and try something new, something else you're interested in (or at least curious about), even if you never had any prior exposure to it. And never, ever, convince yourself that you aren't smart enough to do it. I strongly believe that hard work trumps natural disposition if you are truly passionate in what you do. Courage, passion, and motivation will pave the path for you to be successful in whatever you choose to do. You need courage to do it, even if the odds are stacked up against you. You need to passion to fuel your pursuit of it. And you need motivation because things can only be achieved through time and effort invested in it.
