Major Crisis

On the blogosphere, and on college-related forums, there has been a lot of talk about selection of majors in college, especially because of the economy. The main question is, should a person pick a major based on their passion or based upon what society deems "practical?"

In my opinion, there are three questions one considers in working toward a selection of a major:
1. What are you good at?
2. What do you love?
3. Will your major/coursework translate to a job post-graduation?

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If you can hit each of the three criteria in your major selection, you're golden, and there are two predominant major options if you want to hit all three: you can either be an engineer/scientist or some flavor of pre-med.

At least, this is the perception I have here at Rice. And since we're in Texas, the jobs in this area are in the oil industry, engineering, computers, and medicine - Rice is located within the Texas Medical Center, one of the largest hospital consortiums in the world. In fact, the med schools across the street from us tend to take most of the medicine students straight from our campus once they graduate.

A lot of people in these "ideal" majors at Rice are lucky because they are, indeed, passionate about what they're doing. I can't tell you how legitimately EXCITED my engineer friends are to be challenged by their math professors, and how my computer science buddies can't wait to code in their classes every day. Quite frankly, I'm jealous of them - out of all the people who go to an expensive, prestigious school like Rice, these friends of mine are considered the cream of the crop, and they're not only majoring in something that excites them, but they're going to get awesome jobs because of them, too. And because of the high paying jobs that they're going to get, they're going to be able to make up the expense of going to college at this university. For them, the question of choosing one's passion over career practicality is not even an issue, because their passion IS practical.

I am SUPER jealous, because I, on the other hand, have not been enjoying the classes that I've had with problem sets, tough math, and tons of memorization. I wish I were, but I'm not. I came into Rice undecided, major-wise, but I was hoping that maybe I'd dive into the sciences and engineering disciplines. A lot of my friends here appear to have been born with their passion for math, physics, science, and building things, which is why they're becoming engineers, and I was hoping that I could cultivate a similar passion. But I'm beginning to truly believe that you can't fake interest - it has to come from within.

The truth is that I'm a communicator - a writer, a speaker, a conversationalist, and a reader. By trying my hand at these subjects in the sciences, I have wondered whether I'm denying my identity, trying to be a math/science person when I am actually meant to be something completely different. Furthermore, I don't know what I love, or what to do now!

I'm interested in what YOU all have to say on this topic:
Would you pick a "miserable" major, knowing that you're guaranteed a job after college?

What Do You Think?