Self-Discovery: The Thoughts And Experiences Behind Making A Change To My Program 

Hi as some of you know my name’s Jonathan Klassen, I was a resident here the past two years and now I’m currently an off-campus associate. 

I didn’t really know what mental illness was and didn’t really pay attention to my own mental health probably until I was in high school and I started hearing about it in classes, from speakers at school, mental health awareness campaigns and stuff like that.  

I started to learn a lot about this topic though having relatives and family members struggle through mental illness, going through times of poor mental health myself, and from getting advice from others who had experienced some sort of mental health challenge in their past. ​

Mary asked me to talk about some experiences I’ve had and a decision I made that was stressful for me and at times did have an effect on my mental well-being. Things could’ve been worse if I hadn’t trained myself to pay close attention to the way I was thinking or if I hadn’t gotten the support I needed. This could be an experience some of you may be going through or have gone through as well.

So let me ask you:

• How many of you always knew what you wanted to go into at university and have a pretty good idea of what you’re going to do once you graduate?

• How many of you are liking your program but you haven’t got around to thinking about what will happen once you’re done? 

• Are any of you feeling like “forget about what comes next, I don’t even know if I’m studying the right thing now”?

Those were the kinds of thoughts I was having. Right now I’m in the process of changing from the Laurier/Waterloo Computer Science and Business double degree program to Arts and Business at Waterloo. It’s not a decision I made simply out of rage after bombing a midterm or something like that though, it took a lot of contemplating and self-reflecting to come to this decision.

I guess first I should tell you about how I decided on my original program in the first place.  Math was always one of my strongest subjects throughout elementary school and continued to be in high school.  I was good at other subjects as well, but I always felt most confident in math and for some reason I was more proud about my success in math than other subjects.  

Although I didn’t really start thinking about what kind of career and university program I wanted to get into until I was in about Grade 10 or 11, I always had in my mind that it would have something to do with math. 

In Grade 10,  I learned about computer programming for the first time which I enjoyed and did pretty well at.  Since I’d always liked spending time on the computer as a kid, playing games, designing websites, editing videos and stuff like that and since it had to do with math and problem-solving I started thinking that computer science might be a field I would want to get into. 

When the time came to start looking into things more and applying to universities, I think I subconsciously set out some criteria for what kinds of programs I would I apply to.  I think this is where some trouble began. 

Firstly, I think I wanted to fulfill my self-determined destiny to go into something related to math.  

I also wanted it to be something I knew I was already good at and I would enjoy, and since all my Computer Science courses had gone well for me and I liked the satisfying feeling of successfully running code for a computer program I’d written, even though I didn’t really know what programming would be like at the university-level or in the industry, I thought Computer Science could be a good choice of program.  

Finally, I wanted to be in a program that other people would be impressed by or consider “successful”.  At the time, to me again this meant that it had to involve math in some way, it had to potentially lead to a high-paying job, and it had to be a challenging program that not that many people got into.  

I wasn’t that interested in engineering, which a lot of people I knew were going into, or something like architecture, or science so I chose Computer Science, with Business as well because “Double Degree” made it sound even more prestigious.  Again, I probably wouldn’t have admitted back then that these were necessarily the reasons I chose my program, but I can see now that these things definitely were shaping my thinking.

Even though I felt like I was making a good decision, one that felt safe for myself and that others would approve of because it satisfied these criteria I set for myself, there was a part of me deep down that felt some doubt and discomfort. In high school, I also enjoyed and did well in classes like Religious Studies, and English, and Human Behaviour.  

I even got an award for having the top mark in Philosophy in Grade 12. But whenever I started thinking about maybe pursuing some sort of Arts program in university I started having thoughts like: “what would I even do with that kind of degree?”, “what would other people think of me?”, and “I don’t even like writing, I like math!”. 

Part of what gave me that good mark in Philosophy was an essay I wrote for the independent study unit which was titled How is our Meaning of Life Determined?. 

I don’t want to bore anyone who isn’t as interested in philosophy as I am so I won’t go into too much detail or get into any theology but basically the conclusion I came to was that we’re not all individually assigned one specific meaning that we’re supposed to try to fulfill for our lives to be meaningful but our purpose is to simply live a life of love, serving others, trying to be the best versions of ourselves we can be which will look different for all of us because we were all created differently, we all live through different experiences, and we were all given different gifts.

Since I wrote that essay, this has basically always been in the back of my mind and has caused me to struggle when making decisions: both smaller choices in how I live my everyday life, and bigger decisions like what field of study to go into or what kind of career I want to have in the future. 

When I wrote it I’d already been accepted into the double degree program and was set to get started in a few months, so instead of thinking about how I would apply my new theory in how I selected my program, I started thinking about how I could apply this through what I was going to learn in computer science and business.  I didn’t really know exactly what that would look like for me but I thought maybe I’d eventually end up working for some non-profit organization as a software developer or something like that.  

With many tough math classes that I barely passed in first year and the computer science classes not being as enjoyable as I was expecting them to be for me, this hope that I would eventually start doing something meaningful with what I was learning is basically what motivated me to get through my first year of the computer science part of the program (I was liking the business part though).

The real turning point for me was last fall term, as I had a computer science class that I just didn’t feel interested in at all.  I just didn’t feel passionate anymore about spending hours coding, allocating memory, creating algorithms, etc and I wished I could take a class where I could write, have discussions about issues relevant to my life, and learn things that would help me help others in a more explicit way but I wasn’t able to do so because I didn’t have any electives. 

This was the point when I started thinking that maybe I wasn’t in the right program. At times, thinking about this stuff made me feel kind of down as I still had those criteria set out for myself subconsciously.  I told myself maybe I just hadn’t tried hard enough and I felt like I would just be giving up if I decided to drop out of the program. 

Again I was also worried about what people would think of me. For some reason I thought people would see me as a failure if I dropped out of this program. This kind of thinking kind of caused me to have a negative outlook on life for a while and made me feel some anxiety at times. 

After thinking things through more over my co-op term though, in winter term and talking with a number of different advisors, counselors and people close to me, I started to realize that I the way I was thinking wasn’t good for me: I was too influenced by societal pressures, the constraints I’d put on myself and what I thought other people would think of me rather than what was best for me and I was getting too caught up in my negative way of thinking. 

​So eventually I did some research, got some more information from advisors and then, to make a long story short, I decided to make the change to Arts and Business starting this next Winter term which is a decision I’m satisfied with right now.  

Although it was a complicated process, and I haven’t actually started in the new program or picked my arts major so I don’t know for certain what it will actually be like, I feel relieved and more at ease in a way knowing that I’ll be studying something that I think I’ll find more interesting.

So my point in sharing these experiences isn’t to try to convince you all to also change to Arts or something if you’re not in it already.  There are a few things I hoped people would take away from this and that I’m trying to keep in mind as well: 

1. Don’t let other people or societal norms influence you or tell you what is successful.  In whatever situation, trust yourself, do what truly feels right or meaningful or enjoyable or fulfilling for you.  

It can be hard sometimes to do something that goes against what’s expected of you especially if you’ve also put those expectations on yourself, but I think it makes you feel a lot better about yourself in the end.

2. The next point is that sometimes you have to struggle and actually experience things to find out what’s best for you.  It was hard for me to know for sure if I would actually like computer science or not before I went into it and although it kind of feels like it was a waste of time and money to try something out without knowing 100% if it was right for me, I wouldn’t have learned as much about myself if I hadn’t gone through this all.  

Even though computer science wasn’t the right fit for me, I know there’s many great things people can do and people are doing already with computer science that is making a positive impact on the world. And overall, it’s not just about what you study for and what you do for your job but also how you live and treat others in every aspect of your life.

3. Finally, pay attention to your own mental health and the mental health of people close to you. Something I’ve learned through my experience in learning about mental health is that negative thoughts are simply natural: they just happen, they’re separate from you. 

You can’t control that they happen but what you can control is how much effort you put into them. It can be difficult when you constantly are having thoughts that stress you out or make you feel overwhelmed or anxious but if you can learn to just let these thoughts pass by and try to talk about how you’re feeling with people you trust like your parents or friends or guidance counsellors, it will become easier for you. 

And if things really aren’t getting better don’t be afraid to get help from someone like a doctor or psychiatrist. Mental illness has physical causes that can be treated with medication just like any other type of illness. (Revision 2025/02/18: don't follow this advice, find a great therapist instead or other resources that I have found helpful you can find here).

So I hope this was helpful for any of you who might be going through anything similar to what I was. Feel free to come talk to me about anything afterwards or contact me another time if you want. Thanks.