What do I want to do with my life?

Pre-registering for my Spring 2012 classes has caused me a big realization: The future direction of my life, career, and basically what my world is going to revolve around for the better part of my adulthood is being decided right now through a few clicks of my mouse. For the longest time I thought I knew what I wanted to do, to major in, and to what direction I wanted to take my life, but now I'm not so sure. I'm caught in between a rock and a hard place, between what I think I should do and what I think I will actually enjoy doing.

For the better part of the last two years, I knew I wanted to major in international business. That was a given. I find the how interconnected the world is, the hundreds of cultures, and how these all collide both in peaceful and more risky ways fascinating. I knew that I wanted to be able to travel the world and hopefully use the knowledge I gained in school to help coordinate business efforts between companies. It's part of my nature, something I realized even more when one of my friends made a out of the blue comment on how I'm good at bringing people together. At first I didn't know how to react when that was said; I knew it was a compliment, but it still felt odd. With time though, I realized that maybe it's something I should take pride in, and nowadays I have.

My second major is something I've been more confused and conflicted over. For almost as long as I knew I wanted to do IB, I thought I should have Finance be my second major. It was practical, would basically guarantee me a high paying job even right out of college, have great possibilities for promotion down the line, and from what I thought initially after taking Business Financial Management, something I could do. But now having taken International Financial Management and looking at the other finance classes I would have to take, I thought to myself, "Do I really want to do this for the rest of my life?". Finance for me is a rather dreadful concept in reality. It's dull, challenging, and will have me working in an environment greyer than London in winter. I know some people enjoy the risk and reward aspect of it and analyzing FOREX futures and the such, and I don'twant to change my major "just because it's too hard". I like a challenge, but there's that gut feeling that tells you if a challenge is something you enjoy and know you are benefiting from, or you are just being challenged and am just unhappy with it. For me, finance is falling towards the latter.

The other major I've considered has been marketing. The problem with marketing though is that's seen, and especially in comparison to Finance and Accounting is, as the frou frou major. No offence to marketing majors or those who work in marketing, but that's just the stigma attached to it at my school. The classes aren't any easier per se either. Sure, many things of what we learn can be considered intuitive, but with the business school curve and professors knowing they need to really push us in a field like marketing, things even out with other non-marketing business classes. What I've realized is though is that I am a lot more interested in learning about things like consumer behavior rather than hedging options. While I've never really look forward to any of my classes, I can say comfortably that I was a lot more at ease in my marketing classes than my finance ones. I'm more of a people person than I previously knew and I hate the idea of being stuck for the rest of my life in a cubical or sterile office crunching numbers. A marketing major will give me better access to jobs which can have me out in the world more and seeing the logic behind consumer behavior beyond just percentages and numbers on a sales chart.

However, apart from the image thing, another problem with pursuing a marketing major is my future job search. Finding a job will be more difficult and the starting salaries are not nearly as high as for the types of jobs that finance majors receive. While I don't think I will be unemployed coming out of the college I'm at, the type of job will likely be less prestigious. Starting off strong off the block is something that I place as as pretty high priority for myself which is why this decision is also so difficult for me.

I know I should pursue the major and career that will give me the most satisfaction and happiness later on which is why I'm leaning towards changing my major now, but I'm still not completely comfortable with it. I've talked to some of my friends and they think I should go for it and change too, but what are you opinions? Should I go for it?

JP