What Should I Major In?

      I guess this is the most difficult question I have ever met: What major I should study next year? It makes me so distressed because there are two courses that I am really interested in. However, I must choose one between the two majors. These two majors are totally different in terms of their categories. One is an Arts discipline, while another is a Social Sciences discipline, so which one I should choose?

     

     I always consider Psychology as a mysterious discipline since when I was small, I believed that I could read people's minds after studying it. Moreover, I have watched a police serial drama called "Every Move You Make", which is produced by TVB. It talks about the police using the knowledge of applied psychology in assisting solving criminal cases. For examples, when your eyes are moving to the left while you are talking with someone, it implies that you are telling lies. Also, when your legs are crossed while there is someone standing beside you, it means you are having a good or even close relationship with that person. Therefore, by observing people's pattern, I can know the implications behind those behaviours. It is so fascinating to me, so that's why I want to study Psychology. 

     At the same time, I like words and languages. I really appreciate those people who have invented words to facilitate communication among people, and it acts as a function for our ancestor to record their lives and knowledge, so as to pass on to future generations to learn their history and wisdom to avoid making the same mistakes. In addition, I have a habit to do language conversion. For example, when I am watching TV, I will convert those Chinese words into English in my mind to see if it suits the official English subtitles. On one hand, I find that this process is a very good way for me to get away from boredom. On the other hand, it can enhance my language ability in terms of reading, writing and speaking. As a result, I want to learn Translation since it is also a special technique with its own formula to covert words and languages.

     In order to make it easier to choose my major, I am going to sort into some perspectives to compare and contrast these two majors. 

     From the career prospect, studying Translation is better than Psychology. Language skills are very important to many employers and companies. They will have a good impression on me if they know I studied Translation as I am going to be a proficient communicators capable of helping them to build up a good relationship with companies in other countries. Moreover, there are a variety of translation studies for me to choose, such as legal, commercial and media translation, etc. so I can participate in various professions. Furthermore, I can be a primary school teacher in teaching languages if I really cannot find any job occupations related to translation. However, in Hong Kong society, unless I got a PhD in Psychology, it is very hard for me to become a psychologist, such as clinical or counselling psychologist. I am not sure if I am able to study PhD with heavy workloads.

     In the view of my ability, I have the comparative advantage of studying Translation instead of Psychology. For translation, it emphasizes on thinking analytically and critically because Translation is not only about language conversion, it discusses Chinese and western culture as well, so as to help ourselves be more culturally diverse and confident when working with international people. We need to appreciate others' cultures and customs in order to communicate more effectively. Nevertheless, Psychology is to investigate humans' minds and behaviours from the functions of brains by having scientific research. Studying theories is not enough, the biggest challenge for me is to do calculation and analyzing data and having experiments in laboratories, which is I am very weak in. 

     However, studying Psychology can help me to face people with different personalities, so it will avoid conflicts in a certain extent, but Translation may not have this kind of effect. For example, by studying a lot of psychological cases with patients having abnormal behaviour, we can have some remedies to talk to these people appropriately. Moreover, by observing humans' actions and the ways they talk, we can know their characters to minimize the unnecessary quarrels. It could be very useful in our future workplaces. But for Translation, it doesn't have a systematic way to categorize human's behaviours, it only teaches us how to communicate in a more fluent and beautiful way. 

     Furthermore, with the knowledge of Psychology, I can help people to face their psychological disorder and finally overcome their obstacles, but studying Translation cannot equip myself with this kind of professional knowledge. Recently, my junior, Zoe, would probably be diagnosed as a patient of “mood disorder”. She said she could not control her emotions effectively. She could cry alone suddenly in her own room without any reasons. I believe the factors that contribute her to have this mental illness are her own studies and relationship problem. I don’t know how to help her because I am not well-trained in the area of Psychology, but I suggest her to seek help from the social workers or teachers at school. Therefore, I think I will be very proud of myself if I can use the applied psychology to give advice to people who have close relationship with me but suffered from mental illness, like my friends, even my family.

     From the above, there are both pros and cons on choosing these two majors. I may not make up my mind yet, but at least I think I know more about what kind of people I am.