Luck is when preparation meets opportunity.

Or, being in the right place in the right time. Those who are prepared have a better chance of being in the right place, and they tend to linger there longer.

I think the crux of your comment, (although not perhaps your intended point) is to learn as much as you can across as many useful fields as you can.

By and large, yes. And by all means, follow your bliss. If poetry really turns your crank, and you want poetry to be a big part of your life, study poetry. But if you're majoring in "college" and you're choosing majors based on workload, it'll come back to get you. My experience with college English was that it was high school English - in my case, a lot less rigorous at that. The tech writing courses we were required to take in the College of Engineering dusted the shit out of them for stringency but were still no great shakes compared to, say, Mohr's Circle. And granted - I never once applied Mohr's Circle once I was out of college, while high school english I use regularly in online forum fights.

So what it comes down to, really, is are you studying stuff that you don't know in order to know it, or are you studying stuff you know in order to know it well? Proficiency goes a long way and excellence is nice, but graded on a curve. Someone with passable grammar and passable Perl will likely make it further than someone with excellent grammar and a deep and abiding loathing of Pascal.

Had I learned how to program back before it was cool, hot damn the things I'd be doing now.