Choosing My College Major

What’s your major? The question, often repeated in first-day icebreakers and conversation lulls, is anticipated, but the answer may be unclear for many college students. Due to familial expectations, for many Asian Americans, it often takes one of two forms: STEM or law, regardless of our true passions.

The trend is a well-documented one. In the 2021-2022 school year, AAPI students earned 6.5% of all associate degrees and 8.9% of all bachelor’s degrees — but, according to the American Academy of Arts & Sciences, only 4.3% of undergraduates who majored in the humanities in 2015 identified as AAPI. While that percentage has likely changed somewhat in the past nine years, a more recent study conducted by the National Science Foundation found that, in 2019, Asians comprised 16% of workers in STEM with a bachelor’s degree or higher. Perhaps not all of them earned their degree in a STEM field. However, using data from 2022, the Education Data Initiative confirms that “Asians are most likely to graduate with a bachelor’s degree in one or more STEM fields.” Given the pressures many Asian students face to choose a profitable or prestigious major, this disparity is understandable — yet far from ideal.

Years ago, these same pressures affected my mother. Born into a family full of doctors, she started college with the intention of becoming one herself. Yet, while her brother entered medical school, she fell in love with art history, the discipline where she eventually earned her degrees.

Because my mother had already bravely blazed this path before me, I grew up with immense, dual privilege. Not only could I afford higher education (my college attendance was taken for granted despite the mountains of student debt looming on the horizon), but I also lacked the pressure to choose a certain major — two blessings for which I am deeply grateful. My parents always encouraged me to study whatever made me happiest. For me, that was one of two disciplines: English or history. I spent the majority of high school and my first year of college wavering between the two, constantly weighing a mental scale of pros and cons. It rarely occurred to me that both options shared one significant aspect: their overwhelming whiteness.

I did not encounter this issue right away. One of the first college courses I ever took was titled “Intro to Creative Writing: Writing Asian American Lives.” On the first day of class, my professor, wearing a sari and a broad smile, welcomed us to the seminar as we sat around the table, exchanging tentative introductions. From Chinese exchange students to Tamil Americans, almost everyone in the class was Asian, and everyone was a person of color. We read Lucy Tan and Anthony Veasna So, learning about Orientalism and the model minority myth — as well as how to put into words experiences I’d dealt with my entire life. By the end of the semester, I had found community, gained confidence and skill as a writer, and befriended my future roommate.

Naively, I expected that this in-class empowerment would continue throughout my college career, but every English course I’ve taken since has been predominantly white. This should not have surprised me, but somehow, it did. Although I continued to address topics of race and Asian American identity in my writing, this time, few students wanted to discuss it — they glided past it to focus on my sentence structure or choice of adjectives. Whether from fear of saying the wrong thing, a lack of vocabulary, or something else entirely, what would have been thoroughly analyzed in “Asian American Lives” was simply ignored.

Last year, I declared my major in history and minor in English with a concentration in creative writing, although I might still double major. I have not yet had the chance to take a history course on Asia or Asian America. Much like those in the English department, the history courses I have taken have included a few Asian students. In both of these majors, the number of Asian students I know wouldn’t take up one hand: I can think of two or three each (and zero Asian female history majors besides myself). Yet I would need more than 10 fingers to count my Asian American friends in other majors, many of them in STEM. When looking around my college campus, whether studying hard in the library or laughing with friends in the dining hall, Asian students are everywhere — they simply do not happen to take my major-specific classes. Even the students I met in “Asian American Lives” were, for the most part, not English majors; instead, they would take the course as an elective or to fulfill a requirement.

I am passionate about both history and English, and I am thankful for the opportunity to choose a major I love without backlash from family, spending my free time crunching numbers, or wading through dense legal texts (two pastimes for which I am definitely not cut out). Still, sometimes I wonder: Would I have felt less isolated if I had chosen a different major? And will the workforce I enter, rather than providing a refreshing change, merely continue this disappointing trend?

Although these doubts have not gone away, I have taken strides to quiet them. Outside of one’s major, cultural resource centers, community houses, and clubs can all offer ways to connect with other Asian students on campus. For instance, on the board for my school’s feminist literary magazine, I met and bonded with other Asian English majors. When available, courses on Asian Americans — much like my first creative writing class — can be rich, revelatory experiences, often of the kind only possible in a college environment. Even outside of these classes, I found ways to utilize my major’s resources to pursue my interests. For instance, in my latest history course, I devoted my final project to Asians and Asian Americans in interwar cinema, immersing myself in the work and words of Anna May Wong, Sessue Hayakawa, and Winnifred Eaton. This research process also led me to some thrilling discoveries, such as issues of Gidra, one of the first Asian American newspapers, stored in my university’s special collections. 

Finally, in my experience, professors who teach Asian American studies or history have been both invaluable resources and steadfast supporters. Even if I am not their student, they have been more than willing to offer guidance, answer questions, or just sit down to chat, making my college experience a little less lonely. Once I graduate and begin my career (whatever that may be), I hope to do the same for others like me.

Cover Credit: Pixabay/Pexels