What should I major in?

    For every university student, major choosing is an essential and important procedure. The procedure also happened to me during my first year in the City University of Hong Kong (cityu).  My university at that time provided me six College of Liberal Arts and Social Sciences (CLASS) majors to choose. Choosing one from six was not easy since they seemed have their own advantages. The advantages for two majors – Translation and Interpretation (CTL) and Media and Communication (COM), however, were comparatively more outstanding than those of the others because of their application procedures.

    The general procedure of applying a major in cityu was submitting a major preference form and then waiting for a confirmation. While between the two steps, sometimes there could be a new step. An interview might be conducted by a program to see if the student was well qualified. Such an examination, with no doubt, increased the difficulty of appliers getting admitted into the major. As a result, the difficulty made some students, including me, switch their choices to majors with a general application procedure. This kind of majors in the six majors offered by the CLASS just had CTL and COM included. The two programs simply required a “the most preferred major” answer in the major choosing form of their appliers. Students who had submitted the form needed to do nothing – except waiting for an admission.

     After getting admitted into a certain program, students will start the major study. Actually, the study naturally is to train students with professional skills and knowledge since these skills and knowledge may be required by the future career of students and be applied to a particular field. For example, the application field of mathematics is much broader than that of accounting since basically accounting may be only applied to the field of accounting where mathematics can be also practiced. And mathematics can moreover be used in the field of computer programming, construction engineering, scientific research and other areas. Generally speaking, a broader application field of a major means more choices and a better chance of success in job hunting. Benefits like this were quite available in CTL and COM during my freshman year. CTL taught translation skills which could be practiced in business, government agencies and educational institutions. And COM could apply what it taught to the industry of advertising, journalism, broadcasting, public relations and new media. Comparing with the broad application field of CTL and COM, that field of the rest four majors in CLASS – Asian and International Studies, English, Public Policy and Applied Social Studies, was quite limited since their graduates might only emerge as a member of government agencies or practice their knowledge in academic studies. The limitation helped me to remove the four from the six options so that only CTL and COM were left in the final round.

    The hesitation between CTL and COM no long existed after I checking the resources provided by the two programs.  Both of them allowed students to use various kinds of equipment like machines for simultaneous interpretation, broadcasting studios and video editing rooms to improve their personal abilities. These abilities could get exercised well through an internship. Internship opportunities which counted a lot for me were available in CTL and COM but they were different in their effectiveness. The effectiveness of an internship opportunity may be influenced by platforms where the internship is conducted and the degree of participation of interns. A platform from an elite organization where a high-efficient and standardized working procedure is executed can help interns to get a better understanding in a certain industry and the active participation of interns can get them adequately exercised. Benefits brought by a good platform and involvement had been more available in the internship offered by COM rather than that in CTL. COM would invite students to intern in Phoenix, Asia, China Daily and some other companies which played as leaders in Hong Kong media industry. These powerful media corporations required students to function as regular employees and contribute to its daily operations. But CTL provided more internship opportunities in a publisher which mainly distributed proofreading jobs which barely had something to do with translation. Such internship experiences might have weak effectiveness. And the weakness finally pushed me to become a student of COM.