I know I like to travel, help others, and some science topics (not chem or physics). I know I definitely do NOT want to become a doctor or go to med school though. Although I love art, I know it’s not a realistic career option so I might just pursue that as a hobby. I believe I have a strong ACT score (34) and an ok SAT (2090).
I was thinking maybe public health or health science, and then become a PA? Is this a good idea?
"I was thinking maybe public health or health science, and then become a PA? Is this a good idea? " - the Chem and Physics will be one of the requirements. Are you OK. PA is NOT that much different from an MD, but they get much lower salary for doing a lot what MD does. You mention that you do not want to be a doc., but essentially as a PA you will be a doc., except you cannot be called such.
Now, at any job, you are helping others. If you are not helping others, you are going to be fired more or less, if you are not helping others in your position, then position is eliminated.
Neither PA or doc’s travel, except for one type of MD - they carry transplants all over the country.
One realistic career related somewhat to arts is a Graphic Designer. Another career is Medical books illustrator…I am sure there are tons of others, maybe somebody else can help you in this area.
@MiamiDAP The only main reason why I don’t want to be a doctor is because of the intensive schooling and internships (10 years), so I was thinking PA since I only need 2 years of grad. Also, I’ve heard that PA is more patient based, can’t get into lawsuits and stuff like doctors can, more flexible hours, and can change areas of expertise (which is what i like). But I don’t really enjoy Chem or Physics and I’m not that good in them either…
Like @lindyk8, I would suggest IR and a minor in environmental studies. These are both pretty good majors, and especially environmental studies will become more and more important with the growing pollution, global warming, and water deficiency problems. These are problems that happen all over the world, and it’s easy to connect it to an IR major. Also, of interest to you could be a global health/international health major, although I don’t think a lot of colleges offer it.
Physicians and physicians assistants can both travel. There are lots of private agencies that hire travel health professionals; you could work for the federal government; you could join the U.S. Public Health Service Commissioned Corps or the military and travel as a physician or PA. It depends on the kind of work you do in the role, not the role in and of itself.
Your interests are pretty broad, but also you don’t have to combine them all into a job. I like to travel too, but at this point in my life I don’t want to travel a lot for work - I’d rather travel in my leisure time. So do you want a job where you are traveling about for work, or do you just want the opportunity to travel when you like? “Helping others” is also very broad. There’s the more direct, literal “helping others” in social work, health care, and psychological counseling - but there are lot of other careers where you can help people much less directly. For example, people in human resources help people; environmental health scientists help people; accountants help people; teachers help people; lawyers help people; dog walkers help people; plumbers help people…you get the picture.
What do you mean by helping people? Do you want to provide direct clinical services to people, or do you just want to interact with people on a regular basis?
I was also going to suggest environmental science but you don’t like chemistry, and chem/toxicology is a pretty big part of that. Public health is an excellent major for someone with your interests.
@juillet I think I would like to have the free time to travel. I know that physicians are always on-call and rarely have time for family/friends, so I thought that a physician’s assistant will have more free time. Helping other would be more in the medical/health sense for me. I don’t enjoy chemistry, but I do like anatomy classes.
I took the Holland Code test, and my top 3 were Investigative, Social, and Artistic, and PA did match with those traits. However, I don’t know whether I want to get into the medical field because my family pushes me to or whether I actually want to.
Nurses and nurse practitioners also have lower education requirements and more free time than doctors. They also have the flexibility to do a LOT of things. Johnson & Johnson [has a great website](https://www.discovernursing.com/explore-specialties#no-filters) about it - a lot of nurses do primary care as NPs, or go into hospital administration, consulting, health education, nurse epidemiology/infection control, and other things.
Not all physicians are on-call all the time - some primary care docs and those in less time-intensive specialties like dermatology might have more regular hours. However, you do have the long education period before that (during which you certainly will be on-call all the time), and most doctors still do work really long hours even if they only see patients during the 9-5 hours, so you’re right about that.