<p>Do you believe that it is better to pursue a career or major dealing with concepts that come easily to you and you are good at, or one that is based off of a subject you find interesting or fun but have to work harder to understand?</p>
<p>How do you know that the interesting subject won’t come to you more easily the more you do it?</p>
<p>Given that our time at work represents the greater part of our adult lives, I am firmly in the camp that each person should pursue a career in which they can find personal fulfillment. Life is too short to hate your job.</p>
<p>Also, perhaps you can find ways to make what you’re good at, into something that you really find interesting. A lot of skills have a wide variety of applications - look for an application that you enjoy. I’m a communications professional, and have applied that to fields as diverse as professional sports car racing and public land management. Don’t pigeonhole yourself :)</p>
<p>Yeah, as a high schooler, I’ve always wanted to become a biomedical or chemical engineer and find the two fields very interesting, even though bio and chemistry aren’t super easy for me. However, economics and statistics both come very easily to me so I’m thinking about pursuing actuarial science.</p>
<p>Pick the one that is going to get you the highest paying job and have some form of interest in. College is serious business cuz it costs you thousands of dollars that is non refundable. When we are talking $$$ out of YOUR pocket, you are making an investment in something. If you go to college to learn something interesting that has no real payoff when you finish, you wasted your money. </p>
<p>Do the interesting stuff as a hobby on your own time. Do the high paying career oriented stuff as a college degree.</p>
<p>Don’t go to college for the fun of it. Do it so you can struggle now, but live a happy life later.</p>
<p>
Depends on what you mean by “real payoff.” A fulfilling, enjoyable career is a real payoff. Money is not the only benchmark of success.</p>
<p>
Many people hold values that suggest getting “the highest paying job” is not the most important goal in life. Personal fulfillment, satisfaction and a sense of purpose all factor into one’s career choices.</p>
<p>That’s why you do the life fullfilling stuff as hobbies.</p>
<p>At the end of the day, you have to pay bills. Food, gas, and rent are not cheap. It’s a sad world we live in, but everything revolves around money, that’s why I recommend getting a good job to pay the bills and make up for the horrible work life by doing your passions and interests as hobbies.</p>
<p>I have a passion for cars, but cars don’t pay for themselves. I can follow my dream and just buy cars and be an auto mechanic, but at the end of the day, those bills will still be there waiting to be paid for.</p>
<p>Lots of people pay bills on $35,000 per year. Not that I’m recommending that income, but you don’t have to be rich to pay your bills. You just have to make choices about what you spend.</p>
<p>The job I’m taking after grad school starts at GS-9 ($52k) and gets promoted to GS-11 ($62k) after one year, with only smaller step increases after that. That is a solid middle-class income but certainly no one’s idea of wealthy. And I couldn’t care less, because I’ll be working in a beautiful place and serving our shared natural heritage - America’s national forests.</p>
<p>Quality of life is about many things other than money.</p>