One of my students asked me how I became a big-deal university professor, so I told her. I told her years ago the professors at the Big University in the Sky decided to take an average guy and stand him in front of scores of intellectually hungry adolescents and make him sound smart and scholarly. This was not a miracle, but rather performed as a joke on the SATs and on all the teachers who gave this guy low grades.

When I was young, I showed so little potential at being able to get and keep a job to support myself that my family urged me to college to protect me from the vagaries of the market, hoping a college degree would protect me from unemployment. This push from my family joined the pull of the college dating scene, and I soon found myself in college. I went to Western Michigan University (I’m not bragging; this is just a fact). I was sent to college with the instruction “to be somebody.”

“But who?” I asked. “Can’t you be more specific?!”

I soon found myself in college being bugged by an adviser who insisted I choose a major. Choosing a major was not an easy task for me. I thought it would be easy, but it wasn’t. I thought all I needed to do was to ask someone smarter than myself, “What is the best major?” I asked everyone. But everyone gave me different advice, including my Uncle Chick and my Aunt Snow, who gave me different advice each time I talked with them.

I soon realized I was going to have to decide for myself. It didn’t seem fair. Nonetheless, I sat down and began making a list of all the majors I could think of, beginning with major catastrophe, major mistake, major dad, major undertaking, majordomo, major suit, made your dinner, made your bed and all the rest. I decided on majordomo, but my adviser said, “No. Try again.” So I did.

I went through the college catalog and made a list of all the academic majors and then went to Sangren Hall Library and plowed through the catalogs of other American colleges until I had a complete list of all college majors – all 203 of them. I then made an alphabetical list of these 203 majors all the way from “A” = Anthropology to “Z” = Zoology and proceeded, systematically, to list the advantages and disadvantages of majoring in each field of study until I discovered the best major. It seemed like a good idea. The problem was I had to eliminate something, and this I found impossible to do. I stared at the list knowing I couldn’t major in all 203 fields of study but reluctant to eliminate any. What if I eliminated anthropology and then decided anthropology was what I wanted to do for my lifework?

During my undergraduate days, I changed my major at least twice each semester, and during the second semester of my sophomore year, I changed my major five times. I tried everything. At one time or another, I majored in philosophy, natural science, history, anthropology, psychology, literature and 16 other fields. By the time I graduated, I had established a new national record for most changes of major by a single undergraduate: 23. I drove the people in the registration office up the wall because the college had a rule each time you changed your major, you had to go to the registration office in the basement of the main administration building and fill out a slew of forms.

Switching majors drove the registrar crazy, confused my friends, frightened my family and discombobulated many others, but it did have two profound advantages: Taking a course in nearly every field of study gave me a good liberal education, which helped me get this job as a big-deal university professor, and, best of all, helped me have a full and interesting life.

John Pease is an Associate Professor of Sociology. He can be reached at pease@umd.edu.