“Undecided” or Decidedly Explorative?
The Power of Being an “Undecided” Student
By Amanda McMenamin, Associate Professor of Spanish, Co-director of Undergraduate Academic Advising
What does it mean to be an “undecided” student at Wilson College? How is being “undecided” powerful? Shouldn’t students head off to college with a program and profession in their sights?
In fact, at Wilson, all students enter as “undecided,” even when arriving to campus with a major in mind. As they discuss with their first-year advisers, this is an intentional gesture encouraging exploration of the curriculum so that their declaration of major results from informed decision-making. Thus, every spring first-year students may affirm their major for the first time at the Declaration of Major event, where they meet with faculty and upper-level students in the discipline and celebrate their newly minted commitment to their major and minor programs of study.
But what if a student isn’t ready to declare a major in their second semester of college? Indeed, there are students who need more time to cement their professional goals and, therefore, their major. Despite external—and frequently internalized—pressures to declare a major as soon as possible, these students defy the grain. Rather than a source of weakness, it is their superpower!
To graduate from Wilson, in addition to completing a major program, all students must successfully fulfill the foundations and liberal studies curriculum, as well as 120 total semester hours. How “undecided students tackle these requirements is unique, providing discrete advantages for career discernment that foster holistic success in the workplace post-graduation. While many students dive headfirst into a major and supplement this primary discipline with liberal studies requirements initially and elective courses later on, students who remain “undecided” longer utilize the liberal studies curriculum for targeted exploration.
By the time they are ready to declare their major—often as a rising junior—“undecided” students have not only identified their core strengths, but progress is well underway in a major, plus a minor or two. Each course that they have taken carries a distinct weight and significance in the honing of their career. Their coursework weaves together the fabric of their future with the threads of interdisciplinarity and professional dexterity that are foundational to the liberal arts, which inherently grounds the Wilson College degree. This equally means that, along the way, “undecided” students have carefully refined the power skills highly sought by corporations and organizations alike—adaptability, resilience, problem-solving, and effective communication, just to cite
a few.
While the moniker “undecided” isn’t going anywhere—it is the traditional coding used to denominate the student without a major—we can more accurately understand the “undecided” student as the decidedly explorative pioneer. Wielding the power of the liberal arts tradition that Wilson purposely disseminates across the curriculum, they are impeccably poised for success in the ever-evolving milieu of twenty-first-century life and work.
