One of my favorite things about Berkeley is that my peers are incredibly passionate and well-versed in their interests and are always exploring new fields! Many students you talk to often pursue double/simultaneous majors or add a minor on or two. People get creative with them, and I guarantee someone will be majoring/minoring in almost any combination of interests you can think of.
Coming into Berkeley, I knew that I had a lot of different interests that I wanted to pursue, which was perfect considering that one of the reasons I chose to attend Cal was because of the myriad of programs they had to offer. Initially, I was accepted as a Society & Environment major and had intentions to double major in Native American Studies while being on the premed track. While this may seem out of left field, my extracurricular activities in high school focused on social justice activism and increasing representation of marginalized communities within my high school. I had also done some research on Indigenous communities in the Pacific Islands, so when I saw the niche major of Native American studies being offered, I jumped at the chance to pursue it!
As I started talking to other students in my college (Rausser College of Natural Resources) and looked at my Society & Environment major requirements, I quickly realized that I would be taking a lot of classes during my four years to fulfill my intentions of being pre-med and a simultaneous major, with little room for fun classes or DeCals. As I talked through my concerns with one of my friends, he suggested that I major in Molecular Environmental Biology (MEB), which was his major, as it sounded more suited to condensing my environmental interests with the unofficial pre-med track. I love being in RCNR because it is incredibly easy to switch between majors, and every major is declared once you change after talking to your advisor! After switching to MEB as most of the major requirements aligned with the premed classes I had to take compared to Society & Environment, I felt relieved as my four year plan seemed to have more room to accommodate the language courses I wanted to take.
First semester of freshman year, I immediately took Introduction to Native American studies to fulfill my lower division requirements for my second major. While the class was one of the best classes I had taken here at Cal and where I had made lifelong friends, I realized I felt more interested in learning about different cultures and ethnic communities around the U.S. as we went through the course. At the beginning of the semester, we had covered how UC Berkeley was at the forefront of creating one of the first Ethnic Studies departments in the U.S. under which Native American Studies was, and that had piqued my interest. Revisiting that information, I perused the major requirements for Ethnic Studies and quickly realized this was what I was hoping for all along!
Declaring Ethnic Studies was not difficult either as the major was not competitive, and all I had to do was fill out a form with my planned classes and get approval from both major advisors. Since then, I am more than halfway through completing my Ethnic Studies degree, and I have loved every class I have taken since I am able to choose from so many different departments such as Gender & Women Studies, Native American Studies, South & Southeast Asian Studies, and more! As a current junior, to anyone struggling with deciding what major to declare, your journey does not have to be linear as the amount of options Berkeley has is both a blessing and a curse for someone as indecisive as myself. However, you will find the department meant for you even if it takes more than two years! I personally recommend reaching out to your advisors, any upperclassmen, and other friends just to talk through your thoughts especially if you are stuck between a couple options. In a perfect world, I would study everything I could at Cal, but pursuing a simultaneous degree in both the STEM and Humanities is close enough.