"Right, and I never said all of it was, just enough of it that I probably wouldn't choose that as a major. But I think the main thing is that... I like consuming fiction, not so much spending time thinking about it, even if I do love hearing your thoughts about everything including this."

"I don't write recreational English essays," she admits. "But if I were going for a purely 'fun major' it'd be that."

"I think a purely fun major would be mathematics," he muses.

"Well, if you think so, maybe you should go for it. It's useful stuff."

"...it is?" he wonders.

"Well, I guess it depends which kind of math and maybe to get anything really good out of it you have to go to grad school, it might not actually be worth it for a mage, but there is a kind called 'applied'."

"Hmm, come to think of it maybe econ's a better major."

"I think the conventional wisdom is that if you start in math you can switch to econ easily and if you start in econ the reverse doesn't apply."

"Easy in what way?"

"You'll be prepared for the coursework by what you were already doing."

"Oh. Well, I think most of what I'd learn would be, like, self-directed studying anyway. I could major in econ and minor in math."

"Sure. Although you don't want to load up so much that by the time it's no longer feasible to bide your time in college you don't have anything marketable."

"Hm, yeah, fair enough. I'm not even sure I'd go with either of those, though."

"Oh?"

"Well, I'd only be picking them for being fun, if I found something actually useful that was not going to consume all my magic time I might go with that instead."

"Like what, though?"

"Comp sci is more useful than general math, and I have no idea what the usefulness of applied math even is but it's probably also less than that. Engineering might also be more useful and touch on those areas, but not sure about the time-consuming part."

"Honestly, anything would probably be time-consuming if you took it seriously."

"Mmm, I suppose, but if it's something I'm already good at it'll be less time consuming even then."

"Depends if you're benchmarking yourself against the other students or not. If you're good at something you can profitably sink more time into it."

"Sure, but I already have something I can very profitably sink time into."

"Yep. Being magic: it's pretty cool."

"It really is. Lots of nice perks."

"Alex was so glad it didn't turn out that he got it and not me, he thinks I would have micromanaged him past tolerance."

"...well, I can't say it's not a plausible scenario."