The classes are easy. It's the career that can be challenging.
Does anyone get paid for doing what you're doing anyhow?![]()
The classes are easy. It's the career that can be challenging.
Because that's not the way it worked out for me.
Went to college at 18 as a business major because it was practical, but found it completely lacking in challenge and interest. I could do the classwork and homework in my sleep and I was quickly bored to tears. By my second semester, my social life was far more engaging than my academic life, and by my third semester I came to terms with the fact it just wasn't working and dropped out. Intended to only take a year off to figure things out, but I got a job that was stable and had a hard time finding the motivation to walk away from the stability of homeownership and paid bills. Finally found the reasons, the desire, and the means to go back to school when I was 29.
As for all the concern about my future of poverty and debt, you're welcome to your assumptions, but they're wrong. Between ten years of steady work and careful investing/saving, as well as a conveniently timed inheritance, I went back to undergrad with enough money to pay for school on my own and support myself for three years. And I worked hard enough and had good enough grades/GRE scores/recommendations that I'm currently working on an MA with full tuition paid and a stipend. So, sure, the job market sucks, and I haven't entirely figured out what my source of income will be as of May, but that's hardly unique to either my age or my major. I'll be only about 20K in debt (credit cards, student loans, everything) with a graduate degree, which is essentially nullified when you consider the equity in the house I still own, so I'm really not too worried.
Props to your attempt at calling me out, though. Tbh.
Yeah. Lots of people do. Hopefully I will, too, but it's not my biggest concern.
Engineering. The amount of work I see engineering majors put in is insane.
and Major Phillip Dookchute
that's 5
Where are you studying? I just graduated with geophysics at UT (with only 4 others).
Anyway, I'd rank undergrad majors as
1. Physics - by far
2. Biology (concentrations like molecular, biochemistry)
3. Engineering
4. Chemistry
5. Mathematics
lol at people listing business related degrees
texas tech
you only had 4 people graduate with you??
Pretty good list but then you throw biology in there at number 2 which isn't even any harder than many business degrees? Biology is NOT hard imo. Took a couple of biology's for my core and got an uncle who majored in it, not hard at all. Everything else looks good though. Only "business" degree I would put up there is economics, that crap is hard. Sure it's easy to look at a couple graphs in a vacuum, but as far as actually knowing what the you're doing and predicting what's going to happen, the whole world sure can't get it right if it's so easy.
So basically you're 32 and still in school, haven't found a career yet and your net worth is only what little equity you've got in your house - 20k in debt. And all this is WITH an inheritance. Yeah I was way off.
And yet I'll be graduating in a far better financial position that I would have at 22 (because lord knows neither my parents nor I had the money to pay for the bulk of my education when I was 18), secure in the knowledge that I haven't spent the last several years of my life working toward a career that would have bored me to tears.
Chase the salary if that's what matters to you, but don't fool yourself into thinking it's the only way to do things. Or that it's necessarily the best way to do things. All boils down to what a person can or can't stand, and I know for certain that I would MUCH rather live a little more modestly working a job I like than taking home a healthy paycheck doing something I hate.
Work is work. Make your life outside of it. Hopefully you are able to utilize one of these master degrees and earn a good living, you seem decently intelligent. I know if it were me though, I'm taking the sure bet on a good salary rather than majoring in something fun and hoping I can get a job. Especially in this economy, you've got to have a very specific skillset.
4 people graduating with geophysics. There was probably 30-40 others graduating with me, most of them general geology. We have our own school at UT so we have tiny graduation ceremonies.
Well, of course, but that's fairly easy to say when you're young. When I was 18, I was much more confident that a good salary would be incentive enough to put up with a less than thrilling job, but then I had the privilege of experiencing just how much the stuff outside of work is compromised when five days of your week are spent somewhere you don't want to be.
The job I had during my extended break from college was stable, and paid my bills easily enough that I was hesitant to walk away, but I really ing hated it. Which is ultimately what inspired me to pursue something I enjoy when I finally went back to school. I'm not naive enough to think that I'll be handed my dream job when I'm done with school, or that I'd love every minute of work even if I was, but I'll be damned if I give up on the possibility of a genuinely rewarding career without even trying for it.
I couldn't say what the hardest major is, but Comm is definitely one of the easiest. If you're good at something more lucrative, go after that instead of Comm.
Went for the Comm major out of HS b/c I knew it was easy, and writing/journalism was the only thing I was good at. Besides, who really knows what they wanna do when they're 18? At that age college (especially in Miami) was just a 4-year excuse to get laid, do drugs, and hopefully make a couple connections.
After a year of traveling and basically just ing around, I landed a couple newspaper jobs as a sports reporter--mainly covering HS and some college sports. It was fun, but it paid .
Then about 5 years ago I joined a Fire department in MD, fell in love with EMS/Fire/Rescue, and eventually became a paramedic. Paramedics don't get paid well either, and after the honeymoon of an adrenaline-filled job wore off I started to hate it. When you work 24 hours shifts for a couple years you eventually just become numb to the world and devoid of any feelings.
I got my critical care cert and eventually trained as a flight-medic--which afforded me the opportunity to travel and paid me a of a lot more. Plus, the hours are sane.
Long story short, you have two choices: 1) go for the money major or 2) if not, find ways to keep challenging yourself (another degree, a different line of work, etc). Most importantly, like rogue/m>s said, attain a specific skillset that is always in demand--even in a recession.
I'm 28 and I still have no idea what I ultimately want to do, but at least with medicine I have some tangible skillset. I don't want to do this forever though. I just wanna travel. That's all.
any arts degree is useless, same with business degrees...
those are easy degrees to get and the jobs out there for entry roles lmao, u dont need to have a degree to apply for those office type jobs....
I'm not arguing that biology should be at the top of the list, but if you only took a couple core biology courses, you probably didn't even take the ones biology majors have to take. Genetics, ecology (which is really a statistics class), and evolution are tough classes, plus, depending on the degree program, you have to take classes learning to classify and identify major phylogenetic groups. Still, the hardest two classes I've taken (I graduate in May) were organic chemistry I and II. I spent the entire summer hunched over my kitchen table just working o-chem II problems until I understood them. Brutal class.
How do you of all people forget about biochem?![]()
Whats with all the physics being hard posts??
Physics is Phun!!!!
My list? There's only one really.....
For me English - I don't get it period. All of the syntax and grammar rules make this a no go.
The easiest? Physics and Chemistry of course!!
It obviously varies a lot by person. I'd seriously find most engineering majors easier than a liberal arts or writing major. The upper division math classes I've taken were classes I could coast to an A or B in while doing little to no work outside of class, while I in hated English 102 and dread all writing assignments.
Good list, except for Biology at two; stick with Biochemistry and you have something (in most universities Biochemistry is either a separate department, or included within the Chemistry department). Ask most doctors and even they will tell you the toughest class for them in med school was biochemistry. Molecular Biology is not as tough as Biochemistry. That said, an undergraduate Biochem (or Physics) degree for that matter is not very valuable; just can't learn enough of those subjects in undergrad to be much use to anyone. Even masters degrees in Biochem top out at lab technician jobs; it's pretty much Ph.D. or M.D. or you're a scrub.
There are, of course, certain school where degrees from there in specific subjects can be daunting. Jazz music performance at North Texas, or just about any Computer Science degree from Carnegie Mellon, for instance.
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