By A. Gabriela Garcia, April 28, 2026
The loud hum of modified engines was creeping up from behind him on the long road as a group of Mazdas were heading to a car meet at Willow Springs International Speedway.
He pulled out his phone to snap a few photos as they passed him and his brother on the freeway. A few cell phone shots turned into a full camera roll at the conclusion of the meet.
That is the moment Farouk Sharif, a Cal Poly Pomona alumnus who graduated with a mechanical engineering degree, discovered his passion for automotive photography.
Sharif’s experience is not uncommon. About 30% of students change their major within three years of initial enrollment, according to the National Center for Education Statistics.
Students are encouraged to do their research, find their requirements and meet with their adviser when considering changing their major, according the CPP website.
While a change in major is an option for some, but may not be as easy for others.
“I’m Middle Eastern, so I could either be a doctor, an engineer, a lawyer or a failure,” Sharif said. “I had to choose out of the four and I went the engineering route.”
The path set in stone for him was one he said he had to pursue due to familial and cultural pressure, rather than what he was passionate about.
“You go to college, and you get a degree, and then you take that degree, and you go and get a job in a cubicle,” Sharif said. “That was just the path that was laid out for me.”
In an effort to make the most out of pursuing higher education, Sharif thought his passion for the automotive industry would translate into mechanical engineering and eventually land him jobs with big names like Ferrari, BMW and Lamborghini, where he’d get to work designing powertrains and transmissions.
However, he realized that was not what was in store once he received his diploma.
“Some people got to do that,” Sharif said. “Nobody that I knew in my entire graduating class did anything other than sitting in a cubicle answering emails and getting blamed for things by their manager.”
During his time at CPP, Sharif never let go of the passion he developed for photography at the Willow Springs International Speedway.
Only 27% of college graduates get a job in the field they got their degree in, according to data from the Federal Reserve Bank of New York, which isn’t uncommon in the job market today or in 2010 when this research was conducted.
For communication student Tiffany Gonzalez, a similar familial pressure caused her to pursue a career in business.
“I honestly wasn’t too sure what I wanted to do,” Gonzalez said. “And every time I mentioned it to family, business was the first thing that came up because it was just broad.”
After getting to know herself and understanding what a business degree would lead her to, she decided it wasn’t for her.
“As a business major, I just didn’t feel like I was getting exposure to the classes that I wanted to take,” Gonzalez said. “That was how I got into communication.”
Students at CPP are only allowed to change their major after being at the institution for one year, and sometimes their request can be denied due to limits on capacity, according to the CPP Choice program.
Alumna Magali Zuniga Garcia started at CPP as a chemical engineering major, but as life unfolded, she accepted she was not finding happiness in this choice and changed her major to music and music pedagogy.
According to Zuniga Garcia, she enjoyed pursuing a career in STEM, but personal challenges forced her to take some time off. When she returned to finish her degree after the COVID-19 pandemic, she chose to pursue her passion for music.
After graduating with her degree in music and music pedagogy in fall 2024, she said she found a career in teaching that brings her the joy she was seeking the whole time.
“If you really love your job, it’s never going to feel like work,” Zuniga Garcia said. “I love my job.”
Throughout his education, Sharif worked two part-time jobs to help fund his degree: one fed his photography and the other strengthened his engineering resume.
Bouncing back and forth between jobs and interviews for jobs that fulfilled his financial need but not his passion became a balancing act that forced him to leave his engineering jobs.
“The challenges that I went through starting out were deciding not to take those jobs and deciding to try this business and try to pursue it because the reality is that as much financial obligation that I had, life was not going to get easier,” Sharif said.
This shift in career and consistent push to build his clientele over the years has landed him jobs with Ferrari and Porsche, which are companies he originally wanted to work with as an engineer. But instead of being an engineer, he creates a different kind of art and something he says he is proud of.
