Too many interests? Check out an interdisciplinary major
Picking a major is hard (trust me, I switched a few times), and overwhelming because it is something you are choosing to learn about for the rest of your life. But if you're an indecisive individual like myself, then maybe a major that offers multiple disciplines will ease the stress of figuring it out. I didn't just wake up one day and decide the Cognitive Scientist life was the life for me. It took me awhile to figure it out, but I'm happy that I did. The reason why the Cognitive Science major is so intriguing to me is that it offers such a wide array of disciplines for multiple interests. Don’t get me wrong, Psychology is awesome, and I started my journey to Cognitive Science just by being a Psychology major. However, the two are very different. Psychology is the study of human behavior, where Cognitive Science helps understand the mind and why that behavior happened. For example, someone turns on a light switch, which is a behavior, but how did the person know that flipping a switch would create a source of light? Cognitive Science lets us study those mind processes by incorporating neuroscience, psychology, linguistics, psychology, computer science and philosophy.
As I have taken classes in all the different disciplines, I have found myself finding other interests within the cognitive science realm. I started off being super curious on how we can make machines intelligent. I took a neural networks class and some programming classes and realized that I may not be too interested in the Artificial Intelligence aspect. As I live in a world where technology is advancing at a rapid pace, it scares me when I think about the future and artificial systems gaining human intelligence. However, I don’t actually believe that these systems will ever actually be human because they don’t have a consciousness, which is in my opinion an immortal soul.
Moreover, this leads me into my interest in philosophy. I never thought I would have an interest in philosophers and their ideas, to be straightforward, I remember learning about some Ancient Greek philosophers my freshman year and thinking they were crazy. I used to be more of a science-based person, I needed factual evidence that was significant. But as my journey has gone on, my opinions have changed and I enjoy the study of knowledge, reality and existence. If we knew all the answers to life, then what would be the point of living through this journey? What would we be searching for if the answers were just given to us? Is the mind, body (brain), and soul all connected? Or is the mind and soul separate from our body?
Cognitive Science may not provide me with all the answers to these questions, but it does provide me with arguments, theories and knowledge that can guide my curiosity. To be conscious is to be aware of who we are and what our purpose is. I get the best of both worlds with my majors, I get to explore and become an expert in societies academia, as well as feed my curiosity with trying to figure out life’s mysteries. Cognitive Science has so much to offer - you just have to open yourself up to the possibilities and the knowledge will flow to you naturally.