Civil Engineering, Construction Management, or Architect

Hey guys, I am a 21 year old college student who has had a late start trying to sort his life out, When i started college I had no idea what I was even attending for. I struggled and struggled to find the right major that fit me. I was fortunate enough to have a different work environment every summer after highschool. The most recent job was a maintenance position, responsible for the well-being of a highly respected bridge. Things I learned in life about having that job showed me that I never wanted to do work that wasn’t rewarding. I wanted to do work at a degree that gave me the skill to see how things are built. Ever since I was a kid I loved learning how the way things worked. Long story short, I am kind of in a pickle right now. I just declared a major in Construction Management. I love the things I am learning, but realize I do not like accounting very much, or the business aspect of it at all. I like designing things, and then putting the design together in real life. But math is definitely not my strong point. So I figured I would go construction management because civil engineering is chuck full of math. But then i got thinking, what about going for a degree in architect. I am at the point in my life, that if I dont decide which major to stick with now. I will find myself having regrets down the road. Construction Management is definitely cool coordinating and planning an entire project, but so is being responsible of testing soils or land surveying in civil engineering, but then all of the sudden architectural design sticks out to me, because I like being able to imagine big structures and then being able to draw something up like that would be amazing. Im stuck, because I also don’t want to travel all the time for my job if I were to choose construction management. Not saying It wouldn’t be impossible to find something more close to home with that degree eventually, but its got me really thinking about family as well. I mean they are all any of us really have. Id hate to get to distant from my family all for good pay. Thanks, maybe some of your opinions would be of use to me.

I have no architecture experience but it seems to me that it would require a large amount of geometrical math & lots of calculations to determine weight/support/etc.

You might want to look into Urban Planning / Design. There are various names for programs, but it would probably combine a lot of your interests. You get to do things think coordinating and planning projects (for cities), you use architectural drawings called site plans that are somewhat similar to land surveying and you can get involved in the testing side of the quality of a site as well (you mentioned soils). It’s also not heavy in math.

When I discovered the field / major, I was thrilled because like you I had a lot of interests and couldn’t pinpoint how I could use them all together. I would say over 75% of people I have met in the field are in their late 40’s if not older, so I think there is definitely going be a big market for more planners and not many people are majoring in it!

@ecoplanner Yes you are correct there are various names for programs, that are very hard to get the whole picture just by looking at the name. Your comment was very helpful and I will definitely do some research on Urban Planning. Thanks for the help!