"Follow your dreams" they said. "you'll succeed if you major in the field you love.. even if it was gender studies or the anatomy of Victorian architecture".
If I'd estimate how many times I heard this, I'd say it's as much as people who complain for having no job for years. And from the point of my responsibility -being the only sober homo sapiens I know-, I decided to sacrifice studying for my exam to write this advice for the next generation from my 21 years life experience.
First of all, we have to agree that Einstein's theory of relativity was not something he spent his life years to achieve so that we can ignore it this simple. We're living in a world where everything is relational: every human has a different story for his life, different dreams and a different way of perceiving the future. The truth said, we're more complex creatures than a mixture of cake that is shaped and baked in a procedural way to get a certain results, despite how much this sounds intuitive (and fun). We have different priorities of how we want our lives to be and based on that unicorns or hippos can be right or wrong.
Long story short, there are -generally- two kinds of people when it comes to career choices.
First are those who have a real passion in the field. They're people who know what they're going for, and when we say passion we mean that they're willing to sacrifice everything for it. They want -for example- to make inventions, do revolutional research and maybe winning novel prize in this field. They have no problem staying up to later hours working on a project they believe it will change the future of humanity. They are ready to suffer and accept failure for the sake of doing what they loved regardless of what the result is. If you're this person, go ahead and study this major no matter what.. our world needs you.
The second type is having just an "a mild interest". They just want to have a job in this field - which doesn't exist (in the context we are talking about in this article). It might be for example a subject you enjoyed at school or a subject you love to read about and that's it.
A fact worth mentioning is that being the second type is not a shame at all - no matter how much capitalism mentality is picturing it. It basically means you're not considering you job as your main priority - which is totally fine. Your job is not you and you're not your job. You might find having time for family and hobbies or having time for a good social life more important things than spending time in the office/lab/workshop for looking hours. However, put into consideration that money is not a luxury. Money means your food, health, house, clothing and those are things to consider anyway.
In my humble estimation, the second type forms at least 70% of people who say they loved a certain subject. An easy way to know what type are you is asking yourself one question:
"If you graduated and found no jobs in the field you chose, will you regret it?"