The Myth of the Major: Emulating Persephone in Modern Education

Persephone: goddess reigning in two realms

Photo Credit: Candela Tourné Munoz

Photo Credit: Natalie Reese McCoy and Indya McKoy

Stepping onto a college campus is stepping into modern-day mythology, and Stetson University makes this quite clear. Its columned buildings tower like the temples of Corinth, pantheons of professors lecture on the ancient gods of academia and Stetson’s very  presence earned DeLand fame as the “Athens of Florida.” What leads today’s students through the labyrinth of education, however, are not muses – they are just “majors” and “minors.” Yet, recent statistics from the U.S. Department of Education reveal nearly 30% of undergraduate students switch majors at least once, and about the same percentage of people report jobs unrelated to their undergraduate majors. It’s easy to wonder where these muses took a wrong turn and why they met this fate in the job market.

Maybe the real myth of modern education is the pressure to choose just one major, just one perfect path. Perhaps it’s better to be like Persephone, who wandered from her mother’s protected meadow to pick wildflowers of her own. Spoiler alert: This goddess got the best of both worlds. Part-time bringer of life to earth in the spring, part-time queen of dead souls of the underworld in the winter? Yes, please. 

I spoke with two Stetson students who, much like Persephone, are pursuing passions outside of their majors and finding ways to flourish in the underworld of undergrad.

Gathering Wildflowers

Persephone spent her days in safety, growing and gathering flowers in the meadow with her mother, Demeter, the goddess of the fertility of the earth.

Isaiah Roundtree ’29, is a Finance major with a passion for graphic design. “It started when I was about nine years old,” he recalled, after creating his “own little YouTube channel,” as he called it. “I didn’t know how to effectively make thumbnails or channel art or anything of that nature, so I just started experimenting with a bunch of different software,” and Roundtree’s curiosity did not stop there. “It led me to doing graphic design as a passion.”

Nearly nine years of learning later, the passion Roundtree planted has blossomed into both a business and way of life. “I’m generally a more reserved person,” but with graphic design, “I can express my ideas of what I might not be specifically able to say in a form of art. And I really, really love that,” Roundtree said. He has also helped local gyms and student organizations alike to improve “anything from branding, [to] logos [to] graphic illustrations,” and find their visual voice in the same way graphic design helps him find his.

For Candela Tourné Munoz ’27, who is double-majoring in Communication and Media Studies and Digital Arts while double-minoring in Business Management and Music, the wildflowers in her life have always been music. “You know when you’re just doing something and you feel that you could do it your whole life? That’s me with music,” Tourné said. “Singing and writing songs has always been my passion.”

Tourné took voice lessons throughout her childhood in her home country, Uruguay. “There was a point in high school where, in the Uruguayan education system, [I had] to choose an orientation,” towards biology, humanities, law or the arts, but “I loved doing many things… [I] couldn’t choose,” Tourné explained. She remembers proclaiming to her parents, like a true Greek heroine, “I want to do arts. I don’t know what that means yet. I do know that I love music and that it has to be somewhere there.” Now, as a college student in the United States, she is “finding a way to keep that part of [her] alive, always.” 

Off the Beaten Path

One day, Persephone strayed from her mother’s sight to pick wildflowers in the woods, where Hades, the god of the underworld, stole her away to be his wife and queen.

Choosing to cultivate their passions in college was no easy feat for Roundtree and Tourné. Roundtree hoped to study graphic design or digital arts as his major, but his family urged him “to go for something a little bit more structured and viable for the long term… At first, it was pretty disappointing,” Roundtree admitted, “but I sat and I thought about it for a little bit. I’m the type of person where I try to look for the positive thing in everything that I do.”

Because of his knack for numbers, background knowledge of businesses and branding and calling to help entrepreneurs execute creative endeavors, he settled for majoring in Finance. “I can eventually open up the possibility to work on [finance] more with graphic design,”  Roundtree said. Respecting both his true passion and that his family had his best interests at heart, he sowed his own path to pursue both finance and graphic design. “I can take what I'm learning here at Stetson and sort of build upon what I already know with the graphic design.”

Tourné, too, was faced with divergence. Not many schools in Uruguay specialize in music, so  Tourné auditioned at colleges across the U.S. Once she committed to Stetson University, she realized that its School of Music was much more classically oriented than she anticipated. “I’m more like a contemporary singer,” she said, “I didn’t want [music] to become this pressure mostly, when it’s not even my style,” so instead of growing discouraged, Tourné got inspired. She needed to nurture music through her studies as a minor instead of a major, giving her both the chance to learn classically and the freedom to continue songwriting in the contemporary style. 

This decision opened her eyes. “I can actually do more things than just music,” Tourné said. “I [knew] I [had] to take advantage of that because… I won’t have that chance back home.” Tourné saw coming to college in the U.S. as the perfect opportunity to major in Communication and Media Studies, another subject she had considered studying in Uruguay. She immediately correlated this to her musical aspirations, “a musician needs to communicate the right way… if you’re having a big performance… you need to connect with people also that way, not only through [your] music.” She also added a Digital Arts major, which gave her the resources she needed to learn how to independently record music and a Business Management minor, “just to have it there, to learn about it,” in her words. Tourné refuses to be put in a box.

Perseverance, Gritted Teeth and Pomegranate Seeds

Though Persephone grew to love Hades and her reign of the underworld, she missed her mother and her days gathering flowers. Negotiating with the gods, she agreed to eat pomegranate seeds that bound her to the underworld for half the year but allowed her to leave for the other half and bring spring to earth.

The challenges of pursuing their passions alongside education are a natural part of Roundtree’s and Tourné’s day-to-day lives. “For finance, it’s very, very structured and number-oriented, whereas [for] graphic design, it’s kind of free and open,” Roundtree said. Oftentimes, to focus on finance, he has to get out of what he deems his ‘design mode.’ “I sort of get into that mindset where I’m sitting down and I’m thinking of 100 different ideas in my head, sketching out a bunch of different things… I notice myself going into that mode in situations where it may not actually apply.” 

Tourné shared that she is sometimes critiqued for her curiosity across multiple subjects. “People can [take it as I was] not brave enough to do just music,” she said, “but some other people can see [I have] so many interests, so [I] just went for all of them.” Although the chatter has caused Tourné to muse about what it might have been like to simply major in music, she always concludes that her interests are in perfect harmony. “I feel happy with my decision… my majors are really lovely and I’m grateful that I have the chance to do it all.”

The Best of Both Worlds

So, Persephone became the goddess of spring and the queen of the underworld.

Roundtree has grown to see the beauty in blending “graphic design and [his] major of finance,” mentioning how “it shows how multi-dimensional you have to be as a person [and] as an individual in society.” Not only has his heart for graphic design rendered him irreplaceable in the cut-and-calculated world of finance, but it has also helped him redefine his hopes for a future career. “Imagine I start working as a financial advisor and instead of me just talking directly to the customer… I could visually show what I’m talking about in terms of graphic design,” Roundtree said. For him, this is the wholeness of who he is.

As Tourné puts it, “I don’t feel pressured, so I never get tired of [my passion].” In her coursework, she has enjoyed the flexibility to integrate music wherever she pleases. Tourné described a project for an audio recording class in which she decided to “write a song, record that song, try to produce [it] and have the writing part as well,” which connected to her major in Communication and Media Studies. “I love what I’m learning, and I feel like I can always put music in there,” Tourné said.

Modern education made Roundtree’s and Tourné’s passions and education seem incompatible at first – they no longer pay that myth any mind. Perhaps even at Stetson University, the parthenon of the “Athens of Florida,” it is never too late to be like Persephone, outsmart the gods and get the best of both worlds.