It’s been about 10 years since I finished my first semester at BYU-Idaho. I had no idea what I wanted to study then, so I dropped out. After a 10-year hiatus, I was still unsure.

I knew I wanted something versatile, something scalable, and that I might want to work for myself one day.

When I registered for classes, I told the academic advisor I wanted to be flexible. She asked me what I was currently considering. I told her UX/UI, Illustration, and marketing.

She strategically helped me pick classes that would help me better decide which of the three, if any, I would choose. Half of my schedule this semester was designed around figuring out what to major in.

It was redundant.

Freshman Art Orientation - required for all art majors. It gives an overview of every art major, what they do, and what it’s like to work in the real world in that major.

Careers in Marketing - Similar to the above, but for marketing.

Career and Self-Discovery - It’s designed to help one better understand one’s likes/dislikes and strengths/weaknesses when it comes to work. As someone with previous work history and who has thought about it A LOT, at times I found it to be pretty…well…useless.

It wasn’t until I met with my academic mentor 1-on-1 that I started getting a better idea of what to study.

Every student is assigned a faculty member to be their mentor. This person is usually in your declared major and is there to answer any questions you might have. I had an assignment to meet with him for one of my classes.

My mentor was in the UX/UI department because that’s what I was declared at the time. We talked for a bit about my career history, his career history, what careers I was considering, and how he became a professor.

After a while, he paused, raised his eyebrow, and asked me what it was I liked about filmmaking. Without hesitation, I told him it was storytelling.

“You would hate UX/UI.” I was shocked. Wasn’t it his job to convince me why I should choose UX/UI?

He told me that there’s virtually no storytelling in UX/UI. He also mentioned that the little storytelling it was a thankless job. He then told me that I would love marketing.

When I initially told the advisor, as I was registering for classes, that marketing was something I was considering to major in, it was based on nothing. It just sounded nice for some reason. I had no idea what marketers actually did. To be honest, I still fully don’t.

After meeting with my mentor and several other professors, and as we got further into my classes (Career and Self-Discovery isn’t that bad), I learned that marketing is storytelling.

A customer is having trouble choosing between two vacuums. They function the same. The quality is equal. The price difference is negligible. How do they choose?

It comes down to how that product is marketed, how it’s branded, or, in other words, how the story is told.

My friends, I love storytelling. If marketing is storytelling, then maybe I love marketing too.

Sincerely,

a marketing major

Learning at 30