Coming into college, I was fascinated with computers. I wanted to know all I could about them. I spent a large majority of my free time in high school playing interactive games. Originally, I was accepted into LMU as a computer science major, wanting to go into game design. The more I thought about it, the more I realized that while I loved playing computer games for fun, creating them for a living didn’t excite me in the same way playing them did. So I opted to change my major to communication studies. I had decided I wanted to go into sports media, and I thought communications was the closest thing to broadcasting that LMU offered so I went with that. Little did I know, it was the best decision I could have made.
Fast-forward to present day. I’m two weeks from finishing my junior year and absolutely loving my major…
I honestly believe my communication studies classes have better prepared me to succeed in the professional world than any other major could have. In fact, I‘ve written close to 100 pages worth of essays for my classes and it was not easy.
Communication classes are great for so many reasons it would take me thousands of words to list them all, but here are my top 3:
1. The professors: I can honestly say that I’ve liked every single professor I’ve had for the classes in my major. Some, obviously, more than others but they have all been great instructors. The most obvious explanation for this dawned on me this semester… they’re all excellent communicators. They understand communication theory and know how to relay the information in a way that is conducive to understanding.
2. The information: I love what I learn mainly because it is applicable to my everyday interactions with people. I can use the concepts and techniques we learn in class and test them out to see if they actually work. It’s fun sometimes, discovering how, not the content of what we are saying, but the WAY we say it, can change the outcome of an interaction considerably. A more practical benefit of being a communications major is that nearly every job posting I come across lists solid communication skills as a requirement. Being a good communicator is a skill that will aid you for the rest of your life, the earlier you learn it the better.
3. The assignments: The beauty of my assignments is that 90 percent of the time I get to choose what I want to write about and/or present. I can’t choose anything I want, but the topics are broad enough that I can always find something I’m interested in (maybe I’m just a curious guy). Being interested in the topic makes doing the assignment infinitely easier and usually produces a better product too. I’ve done assignments examining flirting patterns, my favorite TV show, Tesla (my favorite car company), The assassination of JFK and The New England Patriots, my favorite sports team.
Simply put, communications is the perfect fit for me, and my aspirations.