<p>Hey everyone. I'm a junior in college currently studying Spanish and international relations, but I've recently become more and more interested in the medical field.</p>
<p>Ever since eighth grade, I've been very interested in politics; during high school, I was a member of Model UN and my school's politics club, and my favorite class was definitely AP Government and Politics.</p>
<p>Naturally, I entered college all set to major in IR and/or Spanish (since I have always loved learning foreign languages in general, and Spanish in particular). I figured I was one of the lucky ones - someone who already clearly knew what they wanted to do before starting college.</p>
<p>At this point, I should say that during the summer before college, I did briefly consider become pre-med; however, I didn't dwell on this for too long and happily enrolled in classes such as Introduction to Law and Politics of Asia, in addition to my language classes.
Over the past two years, I have thoroughly enjoyed my Spanish classes, but I have to admit that I have had mixed feelings about some of my political science courses. Even though a couple of my courses were quite interesting, I quickly discovered that writing papers analyzing different political structures, for example, was not as interesting as I thought it would be. While I have thought about taking a biology or chemistry course, I just haven't found the time to fit one into my schedule.</p>
<p>On the one hand, I wonder if my major/career doubts are due to uncertain career prospects with an IR degree (especially in the current economy). As I've passed the halfway point in my college career, it's become more and more common for me to hear the question, "So what do you want to do after you graduate?" The problem is, I don't really know.</p>
<p>What I do know is that I want to help people. While I know that it would be hard to come up with a more general/clich</p>
<p>People go through this a lot, including myself. Think ahead, though. Research. You have to know what you’re in for and you also have to keep your grades extremely high. Even then some people are completely shut out. Biology is the easy part. Can you see yourself getting an A in Organic Chemistry I and II? Can you see yourself going through medical school and then working so many hours? Take on 100,000 dollars of debt?</p>
<p>I think people get fearful when they become juniors and when they look at the job market they start justifying ways to survive in it by seeing what might work for them economically. I was going to apply to law school this fall and even though I’d probably make a decent lawyer the market is not really there for people who want to come in and make a lot of money anymore. It’s still there, I think, for doctors, but there are more things you can do to help people than simply be a doctor. I wouldn’t really do a post-bac unless you were absolutely sure. I think you have to fund yourself. You should really test the waters first by taking some chemistry classes and seeing if you can perform well. </p>
<p>I’m going to say that 90% of my college friends are engineering majors and the other 10% is made up of math and physics majors. Not every engineering major is going to head into engineering. I think my closest friend (MechE) is going to switch to physics in graduate school and I’m probably going to be working in some finance job or in physics myself. Tell my 16 year old self that I would end up being a math major in college and he’d probably laugh at you. Had 0% interest in it.</p>
<p>It’s OK not to know exactly what you want to do, but you must absolutely have some plan for what you will be doing after you graduate to pay the bills.</p>
<p>I obviously don’t know you so I can’t say what you should do for a carer with any certainty. However I think I know the root of your problem. For the last 2 years you just assumed the future was somehow going to take care of itself, now you’re realizing it doesn’t work that way. A lot of time has been wasted. You could have been using those 2 years to explore various areas. You could have been attending workshops and seminars at your career center, meeting with alums that have volunteered to speak with current students to ask about their jobs, and getting some experience thru internships and volunteer work in a couple of areas to try to further identify what area(s) you’d like to work in. </p>
<p>Even now you still seem to be holding some HS-level cliches. If you are interested in medicine (which, BTW, is based on pure speculation since it doesn’t sound like you’ve done any actual volunteer work or held a job in a medical setting to see if it is something you’d actually enjoy doing) there is a ton of opportunity out there. But you see a lot of HS kids come to this forum and say they are interested in medicine; almost reflexively they say they want to become a physician. Nothing wrong with that, but there are MANY more jobs in medicine than just MD. Given that you probably can’t name more than 2 or 3 at this point I’d say your musings are just the result of worry about the future and the desire for security rather than any sudden insight that this is the work you should be doing with your life. </p>
<p>Again, I don’t know you. Maybe medicine IS the right area for you. But if its going to be then you ought to start by finding out all the types of jobs there are in the field; how much patient contact they involve, how long the training is, what people doing it get paid. Next you need to get involved in some volunteer work in a medical setting; its an unofficial requirement to get into med school anyway, and doing so will help you really see if you have an interest in medicine (as a physician or otherwise).</p>
<p>My suspicion, though, is you haven’t really found what area is right for you because you let 2 years go by without looking much into it. There is still lots of time to figure out what you want to do, but you better get started NOW!</p>
<p>First thing I would do is look at your college general Ed requirements and see what required classes you still need and get them onto your schedule as soon as you can while you’re in limbo about your major. Then talk to an academic advisor in pre med or look it up on your college website to see what the requirements are for your major. Then it’s time to start trying to fit these requirements into the time you have left. If they don’t fit, you need to ask yourself if you’d be willing to pay the bill for earning extra credits over the usual requirement in order to stay in school long enough to meet your major requirement. Finally, visit the career counselor and see if they can help you sort this out.</p>
<p>I definitely understand your difficulty in deciding. After 25 years post-high-school of job experience, independence, and making important decisions I thought I’d be the last person on earth to change my mind about my major, and here I am a month into freshman year and already having second thoughts! I talked to an advisor today and when we looked at credit requirements I realized how critical it is that I sort this out ASAP. Best of luck to you - I hope the advisors can help you discover your calling and you have the time, money, or better yet both to pursue what you really want. As they say - better late than never. Better to switch gears now than graduate with a degree you are really unhappy with.</p>
<p>I don’t know how many times I changed my mind back and forth between planning on grad school and medical school for almost three years.
What finally helped me make the decision? I looked at what I was already doing. From the start of college, I realized that I had been asking about research opportunities and getting heavily involved in a lab. And instead of spending my time trying to pick up more hospital volunteering and shadowing, I was spending more and more time in the lab. I think what finally tipped the balance was when I won a major research scholarship. I finally realized that the research was what I was drawn to, AND it was something I was good at. I think I felt somewhat “obligated” in a terrible sense to do pre-med, for some reason, even though that’s not what I was really passionate about. Especially for medicine, don’t do it if it’s not something you absolutely 100% feel is the best choice for your life. If your passion really is international relations, don’t switch to pre-med just for the sake of career options. If there is more to it, I would seriously make sure you want to go this route before making a change - shadowing, volunteering, perhaps informational interviews.
But before you go that far, even, have you talked to a career counselor at your school? They might be able to help you figure out what you could do with your current degree plans, or help you find a career path that looks like a good choice and find a major route that works with that.</p>
<p>Thanks for the advice and thoughts everyone. I think what I’m going to do is shadow my mom, who happens to be a doctor, when I’m home for winter break. Right now she works in an urgent care clinic, which isn’t exactly the glamourous/exciting kind of medicine people see on TV. I figure, then, that if I find myself interested in her work, I should probably give a post-bacc some serious thought.</p>
<p>Another idea for you to consider–maybe a masters degree in public health? That could combine quite nicely with your IR degree and foreign language expertise.</p>
<p>I think that as students our inclination is to believe that when we have doubts, we should take more or different classes. My advice is actually not to change your classes, but to add experiences. You’re a junior and your add/drop period for this semester will likely end before you make up your mind. Jumping into trying to add classes to your last year and a half to see if you like it is IMO not a good idea. Organic chemistry and general biology don’t tell you if you like being a doctor. It’s also not like IR and Spanish aren’t useful degrees for the multiplicity of areas within health. So concentrate on finishing your major, IMO, without adding any pre-med classes. You might have to do a post-bacc program if you plan to go to medical school later - that’s okay. But your job right now is to decide what you want to do.</p>
<p>I think it’s really common for people to pick their passion freshman and sophomore year and then get doubts starting junior or senior year. It’s then very common for them to turn to thinking about med school. It’s training that leads to a direct job; most people are familiar with the daily duties of physicians and other primary care professionals; it seems much clearer and less nebulous than the whole turning-humanities-into-a-career thing.</p>
<p>So your idea of shadowing your mom is a good idea - to get an idea of what a physician does on a day to day basis. Given your interests, I think you should also research other ideas. You might be interested in working as a lobbyist for health organizations, or working at an NGO forwarding health care in low-income, Spanish-speaking countries in Central and Latin America. You may decide to become an epidemiologist that studies international health, or a community health worker that does health education in low-income Spanish communities here or abroad. Maybe you get a degree in healthcare administration and then go work setting up hospitals and clinics in resource-poor locations. Maybe you teach Spanish to doctors or act as a medical interpreter. Maybe you’ll work as a consular official in the foreign service who aids Americans in finding healthcare or helps them get home if they get really sick.</p>
<p>Even if you do become a physician, your IR and Spanish background might take you to Doctors Without Borders or becoming a medical officer for the CDC/DHHS. There are also tons of other health care options - physicians assistants and nurse practitioners deliver primary care, but go to school for less time. Regular registered nurses can do some exciting care, especially in critical or emergency care. There’s a desperate need for public health dentists and optometrists. You could also do physical or occupational therapy, which are growing as our nation ages. And there are other fields I haven’t mentioned.</p>
<p>@juillet Thank you so much for your post! You mentioned a ton of options that I had never considered before - and a few that I had never even heard of! I will definitely do more research into some of those careers over the next few weeks.</p>