<p>Is this something you figure out in your undergrad years, during your masters/phd, or are you still thinking about it?</p>
<p>I figured it out after undergrad, then enrolled in a graduate program in the field I was interested in. My career field involves work as an natural/cultural resources interpreter or public lands recreation manager. </p>
<p>Graduate school is advanced specialty training in a particular field, so if you don’t have a good idea of what you want to do, going to graduate school is generally a bad idea.</p>
<p>I’d say it’s pretty common for people to not know what they’re going to do even while in grad school. A lot of people I talked to said they try not to really think about it until closer to the end. I’ll probably be on the same boat…</p>
<p>You might not know exactly what you want to do, but you should at least have a general idea of your field. Getting a graduate degree in history and then finding out that you hate teaching and writing… well, you’re kind of screwed.</p>
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<p>Honestly, that’s really bad planning.</p>
<p>The best thing my USFS internship supervisor ever taught me was to think a year or two ahead about one’s career - always have at least a rough idea of “what’s next.”</p>
<p>Obviously it’s better if you know, but I’m just saying a lot of people don’t.</p>
<p>I agree with polarscribe. The grad students in my lab had a general idea of where they were headed. They didn’t know exactly where but they knew between academia vs. industry vs. government. Those who wanted to go into academia pursued postdoc positions whereas industry focused people applied for biotech positions.</p>
<p>I think your first year or two in graduate school will be a good time to figure it out if you haven’t already. If you are a senior graduate student and you have no idea where you are headed… I’d be worried.</p>
<p>I had a general idea of what I wanted to do in undergrad. I liked doing public health research and I knew that I wanted to do that in some capacity, so I applied to MPH and PhD programs in public health with the final goal of getting a PhD in the field so I would be eligible for research jobs in the field. I was pretty sure that I wanted to work for a government agency (local, state, federal, didn’t matter) or some kind of think tank, or other non-academic position.</p>
<p>Four years later, and I’m still relatively positive that’s what I want to do. My goals have only shifted a little - I’ve realized how much I love statistics and how much I want to do that. It’s not uncommon for people in my field to earn an MS in statistics after the PhD, so that’s what I plan to do (part-time, while I work). I have better ideas about the kinds of agencies and think tanks at which I would like to work, but I still know I want to do public health research.</p>
<p>I agree with polarscribe, in that graduate school is training for a specific type of job and you should only go if you are reasonably sure you want to do one type of thing (broadly speaking). If you have no idea, go work for a few years and figure it out. You may find out you don’t need a graduate degree to do what you want to do, or you may realize that you hate what you thought you wanted to do (e.g., thought you wanted med school, shadowed a doctor, can’t stand blood, but realized you like managing people, get an MPA instead and run a hospital).</p>
<p>It’s a waste of your time if you don’t what you want to do when you enter graduate school. Especially if you do a master’s; the program is short and usually expensive, and you need to target your experiences and coursework so that you get what you need before you graduate. PhD programs are too long to invest time into without being sure that you want a research career that requires a PhD.</p>
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<p>I’ve gotten that message quite a lot in this section of the forum. It’s kind of an ambiguous question. I was talking about whether people know exactly where they want to be when they graduate. (eg. professor, scientist, postdoc, process engineer, manufacturing engineer, project manager, etc) This is in addition to the field of study. I think it’s completely reasonable for a person to understand what type of workplace he/she belongs to before figuring out the area of interest. I mean as a chem e, there’s so much you can do it’s mind boggling. My main motivation right now is to make contributions to science, with applications to society - plain and simple. Again, there are so many ways I can do that in chem e. However, a BS in chem e wouldn’t really grant me sufficient credibility to really make a difference.</p>
<p>I would say that I at least have some clue what I want to do. There are people, PhD’s included, I talk to that tell me something along the lines of…</p>
<p>“I just want a job…”
` “any job in particular?”
“nah, I just want a job”</p>