Are you sure you want to do game design as a major? It is not an especially transferable skill where more general programming is. You an always bias a general programming course towards games but a games course will, at least in the eyes of many recruiters, always remain a game course. It is better than it has been (game design was once a shortcut to the shredder, now it is probably just a shortcut to the bottom of the pile) but it still justifiably causes apprehension. Do also make sure you are taking a real course -- there are plenty of fly by night companies that do such things, and generally speaking if it is advertised on US TV, especially late night TV, then steer well clear.
Likewise one typically does not speak a computer language as much as know it or code in it. I am not the greatest fan of java but it will teach you stuff and not send you down too many odd paths and python is good stuff. If you continue with HTML then make sure you learn CSS as part of it -- anybody that tells you HTML and CSS are separate entities for modern web uses is wrong and can be ignored. I am not usually one to discourage learning but if you can get python and/or java on lock in your own time then you can probably have whatever course you take fill in gaps and get you other places.
If you want something else to learn then
https://git-scm.com/doc is all but essential. I am not sure what the US based game devs are using these days (some game devs use some horrible legacy stuff like Perforce but basically everybody else in programming has gone to git or wishes they could).
If you want to get to the point where you can hold your own in a 2d graphics editor (Gimp is free and does pretty well) and a 3d modelling program (not sure what I want to suggest, mainly as
https://www.blender.org/ is very good but not really that similar to other 3d programs).
For all that I said above though programming is not inherently game design so you probably want to get something there. There is a mathematical/psychological/economics field known as game theory, not many game developers truly know it but many of the better ones will.
I suppose to be in keeping with the way the younger ones seem to like to learn today I should link youtube channels of good stuff
https://www.youtube.com/user/everyframeapainting is not a games related channel but if you can not see how the stuff covered in it will help you make better games/stories and code for them then something has gone very wrong.
You have the normal ones like
https://www.youtube.com/user/extracreditz and
https://www.youtube.com/user/Campster , both are a bit heavy on the niceness and optimism for my liking but I might actually be too cynical and that does not detract from there being good info contained within.
If you want to go a bit more long form I quite like some of the lectures on
https://www.youtube.com/user/GeekNightsRym/videos
Books wise there are many but the one that for me is streets ahead of anything else I have read is
http://www.amazon.com/Characteristics-Games-George-Skaff-Elias/dp/026201713X/ (Richard Garfield, aka the creator of magic the gathering and android netrunner, being one of the authors). $26 is probably a lot for a book as far as you are concerned but if you get it, read it and decide it is not for you then it is considerably cheaper than tens of thousands in wasted tuition.
