My earliest memories and passions point back to ecology. From a young age, I was playing outside with bugs and watching Wild Kratts on PBS Kids. At the age of 7 I memorized a North American bird encyclopedia. In my freshman year of high school, I fell in love with Biology, and then sophomore year, despite my teacher’s best efforts, with Chemistry. I also loved history, Latin, reading and writing, and the rest of the humanities. I knew I wanted to make a positive impact on the world and have fun while doing it, and in high school I thought I knew the major that could incorporate most of these. I was wrong.
In kindergarten I was placed in the lowest math group from the entrance test, and I would write fake symbols on worksheets to avoid answering the questions. Despite this, I found myself moving up in math until the end of high school, completing calculus 2. My disdain for math never left me, although I understood why people found it beautiful and how important it is for science, if not the core of science altogether. Fast forward to college and I declare my major as chemical engineering with a minor in biology at an engineering school. I enjoyed all my classes, except for the chemical engineering classes, and I sometimes felt alienated when talking to those in my major because their interests and personalities varied so much from mine. Why did I pick chemical engineering? Because I thought it would be the surest path for research and job safety. This is all probably true, but I was filled with so much dread for the rest of my college career about what classes were to come.
I continued to carry this dread for almost two years, until a few weeks ago when I sat down and truly accepted how I felt about my future. I knew that I did not want to be an engineer. I could not see myself spending the rest of my life doing the problems I was seeing in my chemical engineering classes. It took me so long to accept this not because I did not know, but because I could not let go of the fear of making the “wrong” choice. However, when I finally took that step and decided to change my major to biochemistry, I felt a profound wave of relief. I now want to be a researcher or possibly even a doctor. The things I love most in the world are people, and I do not want to spend my life as isolated from them as I felt in my previous major. I do not know if this is the right decision, and there has been talk from some people saying a lot of fields will be replaced by artificial intelligence, but the way I see it you should do what you love and what brings you joy, especially in undergrad, as the future is always uncertain and you cannot predict the job market. Do not indulge in anxiety and grief about a future which has not happened. Do not indulge the crystal ball.
What does this mean to you, the reader? Maybe you are already doing something you love, or maybe you are questioning how much you love it. Although my experience does not reflect this, I know there is often a lot of outside pressure to do a certain path for money and status or familial approval, and I cannot deny that these are important and something to account for when choosing a career. I am still unsure about some aspects of my career, such as being a doctor, which shows you should always talk to people in the prospective field and get real world experience before leaping into a decision. What I recommend and urge many to do as they pick, change, or consider a major, because undergraduate is the time to explore, to try new things, and look back to how you felt about certain things from a young age. How you felt about people and the world and what ignites the most curiosity or passion inside of you. A class or hobby you did that redefined the way you see the world. If you hate everything you are doing, you may have to course correct a lot, but it is so much better than being unhappy and isolated.
