Help Me Decide What to Do With My Life!

College Majors Science Majors
1

<p>Hi. I have this tendency to go into these existential crises, and my current one revolves around deciding what to devote myself to.</p>

<p>I'm currently a high school senior, and I'll probably be going to Duke U next year for college. I'm strong in most subjects (super in humanities and social sciences), but I'm pretty afraid of chemistry...</p>

<p>For the last few years, I've been in love with cognitive science and for a longer time I've been studying philosophy (though less seriously in my opinion). First I read Hunt's Story of Psychology, and then at some point later was able to get my hands on things like MIT's Encyclopedia of the Cognitive Sciences, Pinker's How the Mind Works, Lazarus's Emotion and Adaptation, and I was captivated. It was the first subject that ever really took to me. I reorganized my entire identity around it. I can now pretty readily read graduate level works in cognitive science without much difficulty, unless it's thick in neurobiology or mathematics/computation.</p>

<p>I think I liked it most of all because it gave order to the turmoil that I found in my own mentation, and had this way of making mysterious and interesting even the most commonplace experiences and activities. Life...got color.</p>

<p>So the tension has shifted from finding something to care about to finding a career path that involves the cognitive sciences as well as the other amenities of a good career path. Like...healthy job market, opportunities to make a difference (and be recognized), good pay, and a sense that I am good at what I do.</p>

<p>And I'm not sure. I have such an incomplete picture of what I'm capable of.</p>

<ul>
<li>Can I become a great AI guy or computational neuroscientist if I'm beginning college with little programming experience?</li>
<li>Can I do well in biology — premed or neurobiology — when I struggle to do well in Honors Chemistry? </li>
<li>Can I develop what it takes to compete in very competitive academic job markets?</li>
<li>Am I truly good at understanding cognition at this point?</li>
<li>Am I just too humanistic-minded to do well in science?</li>
<li>Might I make a bigger impact in some unrelated or only loosely related field?</li>
</ul>

<p>I'm more than a little lost. I need help deciding what to go into, what to major in, what opportunities to devote my efforts to...</p>

<p>Can you help me? </p>

<p>(PS: Please don't tell me to just wait and then experiment in college. I kinda need to have a vision of the future in order to effectively function. Otherwise I feel purposeless and demotivated...)</p>

2

<p>I would look into some school with good neuroscience programs, you don’t have to just pick a big name school because of it’s name, some other schools might have a program that will just “click”, and you’ll know it’s right, so do some looking around college websites. I didn’t really know what I wanted either for awhile (I’ve been at a community college for a couple years building up my math’s and sciences and doing pre-reqs that most school want you to have), I love science and math, but I don’t want to major in math (boring), biology (terrible job market and I’d have to mess with a dead animal or two along the way), chemistry (just didn’t feel it), and physics (really liked this, but I wanted something more interdisciplinary). I searched around and happened to find a marine science (including biological/chemical/physical/ecological oceanography classes) minor I just feel in love with at W&M. I noticed their geology program, looked through it and it “clicked” with me (well, so did the atmospheric science program at UVA, but I picked W&M over UVA because I like smaller schools and less of a party crowd). I figured that what I was looking for was a geoscience program, and the class descriptions sounded so interesting and just plain fun (field trips and such). </p>

<p>So anyways… (sorry about that), you still have time to make your mind up, but I do feel that by reading your post, that psychology would be more “you” than philosophy (I took a developmental psy class and just LOVED it, I learned a lot from it). Be good at what you, passionate, but do realize that you will most likely need to go to grad school to find a job in that, and it might not be the same title (unless you go the med school rout and plan to become a psychiatrist, behavioral-developmental pediatrician (you will really get to make a difference here), or a neuroscientist). Make sure your undergrad will leave many doors open for whatever you decide to do in grad school. I’m still not 100% sure which geoscience I want to go after, but for undergrad, I’ll stick with that geology major and take classes in hydrology, oceanography, atmospheric science, and geophysics to keep my doors open. Good luck.</p>

3

<p>I would say that you should choose a major that interests you and begin to take classes and that will help you determine which path is right for you, I have rarely ever heard anyone sticking with the major they started college with. Use your freshman year wisely though, I would go and talk to/ contact profs in the subjects you are interested and get their take on things.</p>