If you’re still trying to decide whether you should settle down academically and finally declare your major in finance or just go for it and major in theatre and dance like you always dreamed about, Wednesday could be a big day for you.

The Academic Advising Center is putting on its Exploring Majors Fair from 11 a.m. to 3 p.m. Wednesday in the Duke Ellington Ballroom, located in the Holmes Student Center. Students will get a chance to talk to representatives from over 50 majors and almost 60 minors.

“[The Exploring Majors Fair] allows students who are decided on a major or undecided to explore the many academic opportunities at NIU,” said Steven Barleen, coordinator of the fair and acting associate director of the Academic Advising Center.

As a former religious studies major, I can tell you from experience that choosing your major is unequivocally the biggest decision of your academic life and one of the easiest to botch.

Consider the fact that thousands of dollars and hundreds of hours will be spent over the next four years pursuing the degree. Now consider that once you actually get your diploma, you will begin searching for a job that capitalizes on it. That would mean that almost all of your weekdays from now until you retire could revolve around whatever major you decide to declare. That is five-sevenths of the majority of the rest of your life.

So what should students consider when making this daunting behemoth of a decision?

“Primarily they need to decide if they have a passion for the major itself,” Barleen said. “They also need to ask themselves if they are positioned for success in the required coursework.”

While I would love to have a resume that highlights my double major in mechanical engineering and biochemistry, I probably would not be able to survive a week in either program. This is partly because I find the fancy, Latinate language of 19th century English Romantic poetry to be much easier to decipher than anything that relies on numbers and symbols to convey its information.

This brings me to the second thing you need to consider: do you like the subject? As the semester goes on and the temperature plummets, those 8 a.m. power lectures become less and less of an incentive to drag yourself out from beneath your comforters.

If you do not like the subject, then chances are you will completely lose interest by November and start hoping for the unlikely event that you ace the final.

Third, you need to have a tentative plan for how you will utilize the degree after college. I am not saying we all need to be lawyers and businessmen, but unless you are so enraptured by your art history class that you want to spend the next seven years working toward a doctorate and becoming a professor of art, explore your options first.

Go to the Exploring Majors Fair Wednesday and try to find a major that straddles the blurry line between interesting and practical. It’s worth your time.