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early all third-year junior high school students in Indonesia face the same problem: choosing a major in senior high school. Officially, there are three majors to choose from: social studies, science and languages. And even from those limited options many schools only offer two of them (social studies and science).

In that respect, the decision seems to be easy to make, as there are only two (or three) choices. However, there are also reasons why junior high school students need guidance and help, because their choice will determine their future.

That’s probably the first time students have to take an important decision. In my own experience, choosing a school major frightened me considerably. This particular decision was not something I could make on a whim, since it would affect my school life and even my career path. Choosing the “wrong” major could result in me wasting three years without utilizing my potential and also the possibility of getting left behind in college because I didn’t get the right basic education in high school.

Meanwhile, this fear is fueled by a lack of information about the majors. Most of what we know came from unreliable or incomplete sources of information that are, unfortunately, rampant among students.

The first thing I learned about the majors came from scraps of conversation about high school life I heard from my parents, which resulted in a perception that students majoring in social studies are lazy underachievers while all students from the science major are ambitious overachievers.

Others say the social studies major is some kind of heaven for students with super lenient teachers and zero homework, while the science major is hell with tons of work, tons of stress and lots of complex-looking calculations. Somehow those stereotypes stick and still bias my image of the majors.

High school students never experience anything similar to college/university life or a workplace. Their lack of experience makes it more difficult for them to make a decision and bear the consequences of that decision. How can we students predict the impacts of the choice we make when we don’t have enough experience to understand what will happen and what is needed to succeed in universities or workplaces?

With the stereotypes floating around, and our lack of both decision-making and work experience, junior high school students really need guidance from parents, teachers and any other adults around us to share their experience about universities and workplaces and give reliable and complete information about the majors.

Students need information and experience because there really are a lot of differences between the choices they have to make.

Nicolette Anne Hendrawinata
Jakarta