interview analysis
The three interviews that I took had very varying opinions about deciding upon ones major. My first interviewee is undecided about her major. She feels she needs to explore before committing to a particular course. Her idea about college was to explore and experiment and then take the final decision. However, she seemed stressed and anxious about deciding a major. Her behavior matched the research done by Gordon where she stated that the undecided students where more anxious, dogmatic and have lower self-esteem.
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My second interviewee's idea of deciding a major was to ensure that it had a market value, in other words a major that could help get him a well paying job. In his case he decided his major based on the job he has in mind. Unlike my first interviewee he didn’t feel the need to explore to know what he wanted. His interview made me ponder of the fact if he was narrow minded in his approach or extremely focused.
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My third interviewee like my second one, came into the college with a decided major. She seemed to have identified her passions and interests and wanted to pursue it as her major. As shown in the study done by Gordon, my interviewee too was planning on changing her major however not a very drastic change. Another match to the research done by Taylor showed that even though my interviewee knew what her major was she wasn’t entirely sure about what career path she wanted to take up.
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After interviewing my three subjects, I realized that one's decision about a major is affected by a number of reasons. Unlike Begg’s research which only showed four factors that affect a students decision about his or her major, I felt there were more that just four. One cannot determine the exact number and types of factors because every student has different circumstances and situations in lieu of which they make their choices and decisions. |