By: Meera Eragoda, Staff Writer

SFU’s Academic Advising Department held an event entitled 7 Minute Majors, on March 5 at 10:30 a.m. According to the event page, this event is for anyone who is unsure of what to major in, interested in exploring other program options, or would like to hear from directly from students in various programs.

The event took place in Saywell Hall and attendees were provided pizza and refreshments. A representative from each major was placed at a table and one to two attendees made their way to a table every seven minutes.

The majors represented were communication, health science, human geography, linguistics, political science, philosophy, resource and environmental management, economics, criminology, and actuarial science.

At each table, the representatives asked what the attendees’ majors were and, where possible, attempted to relate the major they were representing to the majors of the attendees. They covered what each program was like and why they were passionate about it, with the caveat that they were not allowed to talk about career opportunities that these majors led to.

Kaitlyn Brown, a first year student and undeclared major, found the event helpful. “I just wanted to get an idea of the possibilities that were out there to major in because I didn’t really know what was out there.” 

Prior to this event, she had taken a couple of linguistics courses and found herself very interested in it. As a result of this event, and getting to talk to the representative for linguistics, she believes she’s found her major. 

“It really helped me understand more about it so I found that really helpful because now I think I might major in it.”

A transfer student from Douglas College, Julia Brown, was at the event exploring minor options to complement her sociology major. When asked how she found the event, Brown responded, “Inspirational. It informs me that there’s a lot more major opportunities than what you think are there. You think of the big ones, english, psych, science, you don’t really think there’s all these facets you can get into. But this has now shown me that there are so many.” 

Brown also added, “It’s a tad overwhelming because there are so many options and you really have to take advantage of these resources, academic advisors, and career advisors because with so many opportunities you just have to narrow them down. In that sense, it might be overwhelming but it’s still really good.”

Leo Chen, the representative for actuarial science, told The Peak that he decided to volunteer because there are only about 12 people in the program this year. 

“Because of how small it is, I thought it would be nice to get the word out about our program because it may be something people might want to explore. But if [students] don’t know about it, how do they know to explore?”

Human Geography representative, Leo Dittmer said that he wanted to participate in this event because he changed his major since starting at SFU. 

“I think I understand what people might be thinking if they’re not sure what they want to go into. And then also because I think if I hadn’t taken a human geography course, I wouldn’t have any idea what it was like,” he said. “It’s one of those ones that unless somebody explains it to you, you have no idea what that is.”