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Welcome to Career Services &
 Professional Life Development


CHOOSING A MAJORteal line

Transferable Skills

You can find out what you can do with SPECIFIC majors, by visiting the "What Can I Do With A Major In ..." pages.

In the Career Services and Professional Life Development office, we believe that there are certain skills that you acquire just by virtue of being a USM student. Just because you are here, you learn:

  • How to work with a wide variety of people ...
  • How to think on your feet ...
  • How to take a group of unrelated facts and put them together to make sense ...
  • How to think logically and critically ...
  • How to do primary and secondary research, and how to understand the difference between the two ...
  • ... And a host of other, similar, skills ...

These are the skills that you will "sell" to your first employer after you graduate from USM!

If you believe this theory ... and we do ... then it follows that IT DOESN'T MATTER WHAT MAJOR YOU SELECT! It makes sense, then, to select a major that you enjoy, that you're interested in, and that challenges you. Why? These are the courses in which we do our best work.

(There are exceptions to this rule, of course. If you're planning to be a Nurse, you should probably be a Nursing major. And if you plan to build bridges, you should probably be an Engineering major. But in general, you should choose a major because you enjoy it ... NOT because you think it will lead you directly to a career!)

To help you find out what major you might find most interesting, we offer some career decision-making tools, called the Myers Briggs Type Indicator and the Strong Interest Inventory. Each of these will help you identify what you like, what you are interested in and what might intellectually challenge you. And they might be the right choices for a possible major.

 

 

 

 

 

 

Back to Career
Services for Students

Choosing A Major

Transferable Skills

What Can I Do 
With A Major In...?

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