By Normally, when students have one or two majors with a minor, they almost suffer throughout the school year because of the heavy workload and stress. But because of this, some students may call Cal State Long Beach graduating senior Sarkis Zakarian “insane” and “crazy” after finding out that he is graduating with a grand total of seven majors and one minor this week.
The 25-year-old business student and Torrance resident is earning degrees in management; operations management; human resource management; management information systems; marketing; international business; and finance, real estate and law. His minor is in business economics.
“Self-motivation was the major drive for me to do these things,” Zakarian said, whose career goal is to become a CEO.
“If I do all of these majors, I would have the comparative advantage to see things from different points of views,” he said. “Even if I were to work in one department, I would see how things were connected and how things are related.”
Zakarian worked while going to school from 2002 to 2006, but he said he quit after the workload began to take a toll on him. Since then, he occasionally hangs out with his friends and mostly concentrates on finishing all of his courses. He said he does most of his studying and assignments on the weekends.
Before coming to the United States from Iraq in January of 2000, he first had a slightly different career plan.
“I had a passion to be a dentist,” he said.
But after taking keyboarding classes at an adult school in Torrance, he became interested in computers.
Talking to a counselor at El Camino Community College in Torrance and reading the course requirements reassured him that he could take more classes to fulfill several majors. He also noticed that many of the business classes overlapped, which he said was “encouraging.”
Soon after, he started attending El Camino, where he received an associate’s degree in business administration.
After he transferred to CSULB in the fall of 2004, he took on five of his seven majors: finance, international business management, management information systems, management and operations management. In the spring of 2005 and fall of 2006, he added a marketing major and business economics minor to the list. By spring of 2006, he was taking all of the majors and minor, with the final addition of a human resources major.
This semester, he has 27 units (nine classes), and after he takes his last course in the summer, he will have accumulated a total of 228 units.
“I had so much passion to advance myself in business,” Zakarian said. “I wanted to gain the knowledge.”
