Yep, it’s another one of these threads. I’m currently a junior in high school, unsure of what I want to major in or what career I want. I’m early admitting into community college for my senior year, and will graduate with my HS diploma and AA at the same time. Problem is, advisement is telling me I need to pretty much have a major picked out before I graduate.
First, does anyone have any advice on how to really hone in on a major, considering I don’t have much time or many classes to “experiment” with. Advisement is not much help, Buzzfeed quizzes are more useful than they are 
Second, any personal advice/recommendation? I:
-do not like writing essays/papers
-would rather not major in something that will land me in a stereotypical 9-5 job where one makes presentations and pushes papers (I wouldn’t mind an office job though, as long as I liked what I was doing there)
-like working with numbers, math is a favorite subject of mine
-like understanding how things work at a fundamental level, whether that be the natural world or people
-don’t care too much about if it’s a top money-making major, but I want to be financially secure and have good job prospects
-am pretty good with languages (English, foreign, or programming), but I consider that more of a useful skill than a major choice
-am passionate about education, although again, not sure if I would actually major in it
-am an introvert, and although I do enjoy people I find them tirining
-am more of a physics person over biology, and biology over chemistry
-want to go to either FSU or UF (Florida schools) because I’ll probably have a full ride there
There aren’t too many good options.
You can’t be a scientist if you don’t want to write essays or papers. Not wanting a 9-5 job leaves a lot of corporate and government jobs out. And yet you still want to have good job prospects and be financially secure? That’s asking a lot.
How about you come up with a list of majors and I can help you pick out those that suit you best.
When you say you don’t want a typical 9-5 what do you mean? Would you rather have a job like a fish/wildlife scientist where you go out and survey the ecosystem on a lot of days? Or perhaps a job like a real estate agent where you get to go out and visit houses but your schedule depends on showings so sometimes you have no work and sometimes you work extra on a particular day with showings, descriptions, research.
I would wager that a significant proportion of 16-year-olds who said they didn’t want a “stereotypical 9-5 job” are probably currently working in one as adults, primarily because my guess is that most 16-year-olds don’t actually know what a 9-5 job looks like and are basing their assumptions upon media depictions of corporate life.
I work in a stereotypical 9-5 job. I make presentations, I go to meetings, I have an office, I spend most of my day sitting in front of a computer, I have to swipe my badge to get in and record my time off. I work for a video game company. I watch people play video games and help development teams make them better. I get to play video games at work and talk to other people about video games all day long. I wear jeans and a T-shirt to work most days, and my co-workers are all incredibly brilliant nerds.
The truth is, you are most likely going to be working in a “stereotypical 9-5 job.” The way our economy is set up means that most people who earn bachelor’s degrees and want to be financially secure end up working in service economy white-collar jobs, all of which generally have the Office Space-type elements attached to them. The good news is that doesn’t mean that the job has to be boring. You can sit in a cubicle all day and really like what you do.
The other part of this is that your major doesn’t really determine the type of job you have. For example, one major that came to mind for you was physics (more below). With a major in physics, you could go into medical physics, where you’d be working on medical imaging; or you could be a research physicist; or go into finance or data science. Lots of jobs, totally different environments and atmospheres.
Based on you saying you like numbers and math and like understanding how things work at a fundamental level, physics popped out as a good choice for you. Computer science also sounds like a potentially good fit. So does economics, which involves a lot of math and also understanding how people and economies work at a fundamental level. You may also want to investigate math, statistics, actuarial science and accounting. Chemistry on the college level actually has a lot of math and a lot of investigating how things work on a fundamental level. And political science can have a lot of math, too, and involves language learning and thinking about how people work at a fundamental level.