What are some good things to major in? What are some good careers to look at?

College Majors
1

I know I should choose something I’m passionate about, but I feel like I don’t know enough career paths to make a decision. So far I’ve been considering engineering, pharmacy, or nursing.

Engineering - Rigorous schooling, Potentially takes longer than how long I want to spend in school, no job security
Pharmacy - Boring, I don’t know much about it
Nursing - Toxic, All nurses seem to hate their jobs according to the comments of -> http://www.nursetogether.com/22-reasons-why-its-difficult-to-be-a-nurse

2

How can pharmacy be boring if you don’t know much about it?

AS far as nursing goes, ONE person’s disgruntled take on the job may not be giving you the whole story.

The trick isn’t to find a career that others like, it’s to find the one that you’ll love.

I’ve taught high school math for over 30 years, and I adore my career. This, in spite of the many, many comments I’ve gotten from people who “could never do that!” That’s OK, I can and I do and I love it.

3

Pharmacy is boring… lol
Also, if you actually visited the link, you would know that I wasn’t referring to “one one disgruntled nurse” but many people who were unhappy with their jobs. I did research RNs overall and almost everyone came up the same.
Lastly, how can I find I career that I love if I don’t know any careers? People always say “find a job you love” but how would I do that if my choices were so limited? That was why I posted this in the first place -.-"

4

What is limiting your choices?

5

If pharmacy is so boring, why did you mention considering it?

As far as nursing goes, all the nurses I’ve met love their jobs. Yes, I realize that that’s a very limited sample size; so is the link you provided though. That’s what @bjkmom was saying: Just because certain people in a profession dislike their job doesn’t mean everyone in the profession dislikes it, nor does it mean that you’ll automatically dislike it. Likewise, even if a profession has high job satisfaction in general, that doesn’t mean that everyone in the profession loves their job or that you’ll love it too. As the old saying goes, “different strokes for different folks”.

You’re right, it can be difficult to know what career to go into when you have no experience with careers yet. How do you narrow it down then? Look into careers that sound interesting to you. Find out what people who work that job have to say about it. What are the positives? What are the negatives? Is there anything you should know before getting into the profession that isn’t common knowledge? Thanks to the internet and particularly Google, finding this kind of information shouldn’t be difficult in most cases. Perfect example: You looked up that article about nursing and from the sound of it you find the negatives mentioned to outweigh the positives. In your case, nursing is probably not the career path for you.

Another thing you can do is look at potential majors that sound interesting and look around to see what people who majored in that field are doing. Look into those careers and see if it’s something that might be a fit for you. And do keep in mind that it’s very common for people to work in a field unrelated to their major. If you have no idea what you want to do for a career, just having some degree will open doors. The main caveat here is that certain professions (such as engineering) would require a specific degree, so if you decide you want to go into one of those careers then choose your major appropriately. How do you know if a particular career requires a specific degree? Google is your friend!

6

Firstly, “do what you love” and “find something you’re passionate about” are bad career advice - really. Work is work; the majority of people aren’t super “passionate” about what they do every day. Frankly, most people’s passions cannot be monetized on a large scale - not everyone can be a famous creative writer or musician, and nobody is going to pay me to play video games all day or go hiking.

Your goal in a career is to find something that makes you content - that you are reasonably happy to do on a day-to-day basis. You are not going to love every aspect of it, and some days may be boring. I have a great job that I love in a field that many people want to get into (video games) and I’m still bored some days. Besides, if your job were face-meltingly awesome every second of every day, you’d be so exhausted by the time you go home.

Secondly, the career that you pick next doesn’t have to be the career that you will have for the rest of your life - it’s just a career that you’ll do first, so to speak. My mother worked for NYC transit before becoming a stay-at-home mom for 16 years. Then she went back to school to become a nurse. She started out as a labor and delivery nurse in a hospital, but then temped in a cancer clinic, before going to work as a school nurse. She’s always loved being a nurse - it was her dream job. I grew up around nurses, and there’s a mixed range: some of them hate it, many of them love it, most are simply content with the job. Remember that negative articles attract negative comments: a lot of people find an article like that by googling “I hate nursing” or “nursing is so hard”. (And if you don’t believe me, ask me how many times I googled “I hate graduate school” or “graduate school is depressing” and then made negative comments on negative blogs.)

And after doing floor nursing there are so many things you could do. You could get a master’s and become a primary care nurse practitioner; you could teach nursing classes at colleges; you could become a consultant; you could go into public health and be a nurse epidemiologist; you could go into research. The same is true of the other two careers you listed. And heck, if you get tired of being an engineer you could strike out and become a technical writer or a recruiter for a tech firm. Or a pharmacist could go into pharmaceutical sales and marketing. You’re not tied down to the first career you choose forever, so just pick something that you can enjoy now - or at least be content with - and that is reasonably lucrative.

Secondly, your prior threads seem to indicate that you’re still in high school looking for colleges. You certainly don’t have to decide what you want to do with your entire life just yet. You don’t even have to decide what your major is yet. You have plenty of time to discover careers and learn more and switch; I didn’t even know my current career existed until I was in graduate school (probably around 25-26 years old), when I was training for a completely different career. Your future career might not even exist yet - think of all the social media marketers or data scientists who are doing things that no one had ever heard of 5-10 years ago. And some jobs will change remarkably in the time you’re in school. Software development was a nerdy, boring thing until very recently; nurses were largely seen as adjuncts to doctors and did not have the freedom and respect they currently do for many years. The hot languages to learn for international business were German and Japanese; now they’re Korean and possibly Hindi and Arabic.

The point is

  1. the world will change and
  2. you will change.

So focus on picking a college right now. Then next year, focus on picking a major you like, and pursuing opportunities that seem useful to you. And then when you are about to graduate, pick a job that you like and sounds reasonably remunerative. That’s how careers are born - not through the careful pre-planning of a 17-year-old, but through the seemingly random/haphazard movements of a person as they grow through life and learn what they like and don’t like.