I think I'm going to be sick.
To give you heads up, this isn't at all relevant to veganism. :-X
I just got back from setting up an appointment with my brand new academic advisor-- I switched majors. No more journalism-- I'm going into Nutritional Science. (And y'all are the first to know-- next to my roommate, who wondered why I came in looking green.) This is only TERRIFYING because I'm practically done with my first year of school, and NONE of the credits I've taken thus far apply towards Nutritional Science, so I just threw about 15,000 dollars down the toilet... oh, and I'm terrified of science. Nutritional Science has precious little to do with practical nutrition, and EVERYTHING to do with Chemistry, Biology, Biochemistry, and Anatomy and Physiology... that's ALL I'll be living, eating, and breathing for the next 4+ years, because there is NO way I can graduate in 3 years after blowing my freshman year fiddling in journalism. I really wish my tea that I'm downing right now was intoxicatingly alcoholic...
... On the bright side, if any of you all will need a vegan-friendly doctor in give or take 10 years, you'll know who to call. I'll be in my office.
good luck to you! i don't blame you for feeling a little ill :-\
i have been considering becoming a Dietician, but the amount of science courses have made me hesitant
An expensive lesson but well worth it, I discovered in my second semester of my junior year I was in the wrong field. That was 25 yrs ago and the degree I went ahead and got is now worth basically nothing in practical terms. That's what happens when you're more into being "mommy's overachiever" than listening to your heart and head.
Go for it. You can do it. And you'll be glad you did. 8)
Aw, thanks y'all! If anything can be said for the crazy switch I just made, it's definitely that I'm "flying by the seat of my pants." So, hopefully I'll end up somewhere that I love because of it... I think I'll go take a nice long walk and blubber to a parent via cellphone for a while. :P Luckily, they're both supportive of unexplainable faith-based decisions, (probably due to the fact that they're not paying my way through school.) so at least I have them on my side. :P
Fear not! A wise man once told me, when I was pondering "taking the plunge" into self-employment:
"Nobody ever said upon their death bed, gee I wish I'd spent more time doing that job I hated." (paraphrased from another wise soul, I'm sure).
If it makes you feel any better, I dropped out of my first college (2nd semester) blew a full scholarship, transferred to another school, worked for two years on a history degree, then (as a junior) found my calling. Took me 7 years, then 3 more in grad school. And worth every minute and dime.
But a cocktail is never a bad idea... :D
It took me nine years and three majors before I got my bachelor's degree. (Where IS that blushing smiley?) I now know that I would have been miserable in my original field (psychology), and I am extremely happy my current field (math/computer science). I'm about to finish grad school, but not in the major I originally chose for that either! I think college should be more flexible during the first year or two-- allowing you to discover your true interests without wasting a lot of time. Good for you for making a decision based on your best interests and not on convenience!
I can relate - I've done years of school in a variety of employment-unrelated fields, and I'm about to go back again!
To make up for that "wasted" year (which I can assure you was not really wasted- I'm sure you learned a lot, and education is really about learning more than about getting the most expensive square-foot of wallpaper you'll ever own) - you might try into equivalency tests for core classes that are unrelated to your major. Things like CLEP http://www.collegeboard.com/student/testing/clep/about.html (College Level Equivalency Program) and ACT-PEP tests. They are much cheaper than taking the class, and some people can pass them "cold" - with no studying - if they are good in the topic area. Others find just a week or two of study gets them up to speed.
They might save you a lot of time and money, and help you complete your program faster than you think (and get out in the work world and help the people you want to help!) I've taken quite a few and been very happy with them. Be sure to check with your college about how many they will accept, etc.
Good luck and congratulations! Following your passion is important :)
holy crap can i relate! i just graduated from a school i mostly hated (although i met my fiance and my best friends there) in a degree i can just barely tolerate and which i only majored in because it was the only one that i had enough courses to use as a major. please, please, please... if you're in university and think you'd rather be in another major or school, DO IT. don't worry about the extra year, the lost courses, the wasted time.... if you wait it out, you'll just end up wasting even more time and money. (and nutritional science is realistically a much more practical choice than journalism anyway).
I am going to tell you that no education is wasted, even if you can't use this last year towards your degree. You just never know when what you know about journalism is going to come in handy with your new field.
I have a BFA in design, just general design. I am a long time seamstress (been sewing since I was about 4) and I have a lot of ability there. My grandmother taught me to paint landscapes and whatnot. I dabbled in pinhole camera photography before that and built my own camera when I was 14. I used these skills to be a professional costumer for a while. Because I have an eye for design as well as composition, I advised on the stills for the theatre board and other things like that. It was not a career choice, but I enjoyed it while I did it and it was a combination of skills that got me there.
I am working on my graduate degree in counseling, think psychotherapy. I am a pretty fair writer and it has made the process that much easier. I find I organize a paper pretty much the way I organize for a costume I have designed and will now execute.
What I am trying to say, as I sound like a total braggart, is that what you end up doing in your life is a sum of many of your parts...parts being experience, education, innate abilities. The most important things I think (this because I am 47) are being open to new experiences and not closing yourself off to learning, and not just in your field of study or career. It is also important to be creative in cobbling together what you know and going in another direction, whether that is by choice or necessity. They say that 70% of college graduates don't work in their field of study and I fit that mold, being a medical transcriptionist. This career was the bringing together of an extraordinary typing ability and a propensity for languages, and it works very very well.
Be open, be real with yourself and make choices in keeping with who you are. Life is what happens to you while you are waiting for your life to begin. I don't know who said it, but it is true...you have to be willing to set aside the life you want for the life you are intended to have.
GO FOR IT and know you will succeed.
That is one of my favorite quotes. (If I'm thinking of the same one you are.)
"Life is what happens to you while you're busy making other plans." - John Lennon
I'm the last person that should give anyone career or school advice. All I want to add is that, just do what ever makes you happy in this life. You only have one life. There are no second chances, no do-overs, and no rewind button. When it's over, it's over. Whatever will make you the happiest is all that matters. It's much more important than anything else. Selfish? No, At least I don't think so....
Thanks so much all for the support! I love the beautiful quotes and the soul-bearing, honest reassurance that you all have to offer-- I love that I could vent to y'all and be comforted, even though my venting didn't relate in the least to our veggieness. :P
By the way, I wondered around downtown, indulged in a little impulse shopping (on my mother's orders-- and her bill :P), and then went to my vegan cafe and ordered the most indulgent plate on the menu (The Buddha Bowl-- brown rice, broccoli, carrots, red cabbage, green onions, and marinated tofu, all doused in a HEAVENLY sesame-ginger "cream" dressing), and finished it off with a fantastic peanut butter cookie roughly the size of my hand. (But I stopped at one cookie, and I'm neither stuffed nor uncomfortable-- so no stress-bingeing! Yay!) So after a few heartfelt encouragements from my family, some retail-therapy, a few more phone calls from friends/family, and some seriously tasty treats, I am feeling much better. :D
...And my goodness, that was a delicious cookie. I even saved my omnivorous, cookie-connoisseur dorm mate a piece, so that she could confirm for me that it was up to par-- I haven't had a cookie in 2.5 years, due to a combination of my eating disorder and veganism, so I was afraid that I was going to enamored by a piece of greasy peanut cardboard. It earned her approval, and I danced the entire way home while savoring it bit by bit. :P Next time I indulge, I'll try their tofu blondies. :D
I learned to read at age 3--no brags there, lots of siblings older than me who loved to "play school" and be teacher. I fell in love with Norse mythology and Shakespeare (and others of his ilk) while still in the grades. But where I grew up, at that time in that place, girls were either secretaries, nurses or teachers...so I majored in Spanish and tried to do teaching (never finished.) I'm here to tell you, 25 yrs ago the translation certification I got was OK...now it's just a piece of paper. The world has moved on. And a Spanish major was just one tiny step above "art major".
I taught basic English for several yrs after moving to Spain, but I am NOT good with kids and grammar gives me hives.
For several yrs I was fortunate enough to do a little piecework translation (very poorly paid) and be a stay-at-home wife (no kids). Then for 2 yrs I thought I had my dream job, but the dream soon morphed into a nightmare.
And now? Now I tutor Eng Lit from home, off the grid. And enjoy myself. What do I do? Explain, not teach. Make Shakespeare and Chaucer and Wyatt and all those old folks comprehensible to students who are drowning in techincisms but *just don't get it.* I recieved a high accolade the other day from a student who was doing the deer-in-the-headlights thing for the first few classes. What she said was: "You make this live. You make it fun." WOW.
Nothing is ever wasted, but follow your bliss. Create your own job if you have to.
Just wanted to offer some more encouragement...your predicament sounds eerily similar to mine! I was a journalism major for 2 full years, then decide to switch to accounting because I wanted a more practical (re: money-making) degree. But what I really wish (then, now, and forever, probably) was that I switched to nutrition/dietetics because that is the only thing that truly interests me. Now I'm a bored accountant who still wants to be a dietitian but is deathly, DEATHLY afraid of biochemistry and all those science classes. I HATE science stuff, it bores me to tears. That is why I am toiling away in a career that does nothing for me - because I'm to afraid to go back to school and face those science classes. Just go for it! Do it for me!! :)
Good luck with that!!!
I've done the same thing. I havce a lot of useless credits to my name switching from business to nursing. But education is never wasted.
To give you heads up, this isn't at all relevant to veganism. :-X
I just got back from setting up an appointment with my brand new academic advisor-- I switched majors. No more journalism-- I'm going into Nutritional Science. (And y'all are the first to know-- next to my roommate, who wondered why I came in looking green.) This is only TERRIFYING because I'm practically done with my first year of school, and NONE of the credits I've taken thus far apply towards Nutritional Science, so I just threw about 15,000 dollars down the toilet... oh, and I'm terrified of science. Nutritional Science has precious little to do with practical nutrition, and EVERYTHING to do with Chemistry, Biology, Biochemistry, and Anatomy and Physiology... that's ALL I'll be living, eating, and breathing for the next 4+ years, because there is NO way I can graduate in 3 years after blowing my freshman year fiddling in journalism. I really wish my tea that I'm downing right now was intoxicatingly alcoholic...
... On the bright side, if any of you all will need a vegan-friendly doctor in give or take 10 years, you'll know who to call. I'll be in my office.
Hey Mizzo!
Don't be to afraid of those big bad science classes. Trust me, if you apply yourself and take 'em one step at a time you'll show them who's boss! ;) Sorry, I've always loved science classes. I used to take them for fun.
This topic is eerily weird to me. I have changed my mind as to what I want to do for the last 9yrs....I'm 25 now. My last educational kick was to become a CRNA (previously a lawyer, then a marine biologist...and a slew of others). Because of my constant moving and lack of money I'm not that far into any of the previous career choices. I am almost done with my General AA (this June!!) and I'm in the process of setting up my schooling for the Fall for Nutrition. Just remember that one day you might use some stuff you learned in journalism! You'll do great!! 8)
There are a couple of ways to think about the change. My friend lives in a pretty strict Muslim household, so she has to live at home while going to school. She attends the only university in the area. She wanted to change majors from environmental science to environmental engineering (you make at least $20,000 more a year for the same work) and had to get her counselor's approval, who wouldn't give it. She can't switch schools because she can't live away from home and she can't pursue the degree of her choice because of archaic school rules.
I've completed three majors. I'm really happy I went to school until I found biology. I get paid to protect the environment - how cool is that? And about the science and math - there are lots of labs for classes now, so there'll be a calculus lab or a physics lab where you can get help if you need it.
Congratulations on living a dynamic life.
Glad you figured it out now, unlike me!!!! I'm one bachelor's degree & half a master's degree into a field I HATE!!! So now I will be going back to school for my AAS in nursing! HAHA!