Designing My Own Major at RIT

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I couldn't seem to find the perfect major for me from ones that already existed. So I thought, why not create my own. Hi, my name is Nicky and I'm a third year RIT student in the School of Individualized Study or SOIS for short. If right now you're asking, what is the School of Individualized Study? Don't worry because this video is going to answer that question as well as the question why I chose an interdisciplinary major at RIT. I want to start by just talking generally about choosing a college major because it's hard and for some people, maybe it's not, maybe they've always known what they wanted to major in and then it was actually an easy decision and all the more power to them if that's the case. But I think for most people, it can be a really overwhelming and confusing decision to make, especially if you're like me and you're interested in so many different majors and career options that you just can't choose one. Maybe you find yourself wishing there was a way you could magically major in all of them without double or even triple majoring. Well, what if I told you there actually is. I've always been creative. I love making things whether it's through graphic design, video production, writing, drawing. So naturally, I thought a career in art and design was the path for me. I came into RIT as a New Media Design major focusing on things like UX and UI design, app, design, web design, and programming. A year and a half into my degree, I decided that New Media Design was too programming focused for me personally, and I transferred into graphic design. After a semester of that, I felt like that wasn't really the right program for me either, which was especially confusing, having grown up as an artist. I thought, I've always loved art, so you would think graphic design would be a perfect fit for me, but I just wasn't feeling it, and for a while, I couldn't figure out why. I knew I wanted to change my major, but I didn't know to what. Now, RIT has a ton of different majors to choose from, and I looked into a lot of them. Other design majors, business, marketing, media, communications, advertising, journalism, because those were all things I was interested in as well. But I would look at the curriculums for these programs and think, well, these classes align with one or two of my interests, but I just couldn't seem to find one program encompassing all of them, or at least multiple of them. And that's where SOIS comes in. So, I expressed my struggles to my academic advisor and she pointed me towards the School of Individualized study at RIT. Before this, I had heard of SOIS, but I didn't really know what it was. So when I discovered that it was a program at RIT where students could design their own majors, I was immediately like, well, this sounds exactly like what I've been looking for and I didn't even know it. I couldn't seem to find the perfect major for me from ones that already existed, so I thought, why not create my own? And that's where I'm at today, almost two full semesters into being a SOIS student, and with just over a year left of my degree. By pursuing an interdisciplinary degree, I've been able to explore all of my interests: my creative ones, my entrepreneurial ones, and I'm super grateful to my academic adviser, Melissa, for helping me create a degree plan that while making sure the rest of my degree is tailored to my newer interests, so I'm still able to graduate on time with a Bachelor of Applied Arts and Sciences. All this to say, if you are someone who has multiple different academic and professional interests and you don't wanna have to choose between them for your college major, if you're looking for a way that you can somehow combine all of them into one major choice at RIT might be the answer for you, like it was for me. I wanted to study a mix of marketing, media, and visual design, but you could take any combination of interests you have and make a SOIS degree work for you. Whether it's engineering and environmental science, business and music performance, computing security and international relations. I mean, the combinations are endless. I also want to say that you can take the path that I did and transfer into the School of Individualized Studies several years into your college education and that's totally fine. That's a really common path for SOIS students. But it's not the only path. You can come into RIT as a SOIS major and design your degree right from the very beginning. So if you are in the midst of your college search or college application process right now and this sounds like it could be a really good fit for you, keep it in mind. I want to end by saying there's no one right way to do college. You can stick with one major or you can change it several times like I did, you can double or triple major or minor, you can do college part time or full time, you can do it in the standard four years or you can graduate early or you can take time off. I actually took a year long leave of absence from RIT before coming back as a SOIS major. My point is we all have a different path. We're all unique and that's OK. I feel like the SOIS program at RIT really exemplifies that and recognizes it and celebrates it. The advisors work hard to help each student in the program craft a degree that works for them, no matter their interests, no matter where they are in the college journey or where they want to end up after college. And that is why I chose my interdisciplinary major at RIT. I truly hope that this was informative, insightful, helpful, interesting, et cetera. Thank you for watching and I'll see you in the next one.