College is stressful enough, but no one seems to talk about what happens after college is done. 

How will we react to what we did in college and on what to do after it is over? What if we have regrets, especially when it comes to the major we choose?

It isn’t a bad thing to be regretful, but what kind of people would have chosen a different major if they could?

A study by the Federal Reserve shows that about 50% of students who chose majors in humanities or arts regretted it.

People can say it is dumb to choose a major in arts and that it may or may not be financially sustainable, but that isn’t what is important in these majors. 

What about the people who don’t regret being art majors?

Caleb Duarte is a sculpture professor at Fresno City College. Duarte has a bachelor’s in painting and a masters in sculpture.

Duarte said he always had a passion for art, since he was 5 years old. While math and traditional subjects weren’t his strong suit he always had his passion for the arts.

“Art is a very eternal and personal language, it gets you through tough times,” Duarte said. 

Duarte knows all too well the ups and downs of the career he chose. For him it was either continue with his passion or do a manual labor job like roofing.

“If we don’t use arts and humanities as alternatives for capitalism, then we go into more of an empty sense of fulfillment,” Duarte said.

To look at a career only as a way to make money might not be the best way to live a fulfilling life and art lets people show their passion, Duarte said.

“When you study arts or humanities, you are diving deep into the human experience,” Duarte said.

Caleb Henderson, an art instructor at FCC was hesitant to commit to an art major at first, but then ended up graduating with one.

Henderson said he wasn’t an official art major until after finishing his general education in his early college years.

Once he knew what his passion was, there was no stopping him. “Risk is not something that is overly scary, certainly not enough to stop me from majoring,” Henderson said.

Henderson was the first of his family to go to college, but he still had their support along his creative journey, he said.

The support of his family and friends was crucial to being himself. He said if there were people who would constantly tell him his passion would get him nowhere then things might have turned out differently. 

Henderson believes that people in majors with more “money” can also have their own regrets. “There is someone who has been doing nursing for 30 years and is established who if you asked ‘would you do something else in school’ would say yes,” Henderson said.

Art is a part of history. We judge past civilizations through the art they made, Henderson said.

“Art is one of the fundamental parts of being a human being, we create something out of nothing,” Henderson said.