Parents: How many changes of major? How many career changes?

Parents Forum
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So many entering college students think they are choosing a path for life, but I think many of us parents look back and see that changes do happen. Majors can change when you find new interests in college and even when you are out in the world, whole careers can change.

When I went to school (Ga. Tech) I was absolutely, totally into aircraft design. Being around airplanes was everything I wanted (no desire to become a pilot, however). So Aerospace Engineering was my major… for the first year and a half. I had a coop job with a major defense contractor, found out what engineers did, and discovered it was not for me. I changed my major to physics (and my coop job was changed to a state air pollution lab - lots of physics-related work there with mass spectrometers, etc). I found I liked the environmental parts to the job.

My first “career” was teaching. I loved it, but took a summer class and discovered a love for computers (beside, as much as I liked teaching, I felt like I was living in poverty). So I went back to Tech and got a graduate degree in computer science, but my fellowship was connected with air pollution, so afterwards I took a job back in the state agency doing computer modeling/meteorology of pollutant dispersion. (second career)

On the side, I read more and more about Artificial Intelligence (AI) and, through sheer, incredible, unbelievable luck, got an job in the AI Lab at Carnegie-Mellon’s Computer Science Department. It was incredible… I was working with people who wrote some of my grad school books. This was my third career, which lasted the longest, with stints at the Federal Judicial Center and Bell laboratories.

The final career change (sort of eased into it with the AI/telecommunications work at Bell labs) was one of convenience. We wanted to lie in Colorado and I found a job there in telecommunications. (“third-and-a-half” career)

So, I want to hear other stories. I’ve worked with a lot of engineers, especially, who have had the same major/career all their lives, but is it so rare to change directions once in a while?

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One more thing. In pursuing my passion, many times I took a step backwards when I took a job. After undergrad, I think I set the very bottom of the pay scale (teaching job) for graduates. And I remember distinctly the Placement Center being a little miffed that I was taking the lowest salary of the grad students that year to work for the state Dept of Natural Resources. It lowered their average. And the deepest cut of all was in going to CMU’s AI Lab. It was sub-poverty wages (but the best career move I ever did).

So, it’s not always about money. Luckily I graduated with only $1000 in student debt, which gave me enormous flexibility in career choices.

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Hi Digmedia, thanks for sharing your story. I would guess career changes and evolvement are typical. I don’t think many 18-year-olds starting college know exactly what they want to do in life and it’s normal to evolve as preferences change and opportunities arise. My Dad was an aeronautical engineer from MIT and his path was more like yours, using his tech skills in an evolving manner, including government roles such as treaty verification. I was always the arty kid and was fortune enough to have parents who funded my BFA in Painting at Rhode Island School of Design, with some of my literature classes taken at Brown and counting towards my RISD degree. I realized I probably was not going to make a living at painting and that it was generous of my parents to support my passion anyway. My first job after graduating was in my college library, having worked in the college museum as a student. Then I moved to DC and got a job in the library at GWU and the University funded my Masters in Museum Studies as an employee benefit. Then I promptly had a baby who attended my graduation in a GWU onesie. This altered my career path because I wanted to stay close to home to balance work/parenting (as opposed to making the long commute downtown to where most of the museums are), so I went back to work in local libraries and I also taught art classes and continued my painting, which I do as a side job. My son is starting a PhD program in CompSci at UCLA this fall, and I’m glad he’ll have a more lucrative career than I have had. I do feel good about the time I was able to spend raising him even though it impacted my career choices. I’d like to go back to the museum field but currently am stuck in the “golden handcuffs” of a pension plan that I’ve invested ten years in. Not sure if I made the right career choices but at least I know I raised a great kid! By the way, my sister went to CMU, so it was fun reading your post.

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I started college thinking that I would major in nutrition, to become a dietician. Then I got my first-semester chemistry grades: scotch that plan! I also considered majoring in geography, history, and political science. I ended up majoring in journalism with many classes in history and political science (but not quite the distribution needed to get a minor). I realized when I got out of J-school that I was uncomfortable with interviewing, specifically calling people on the phone during the worst moments of their lives. So being a reporter didn’t seem like a good job for me. I decided to go to law school (refuge of liberal arts grads without more concrete plans). My grades were good and I was enticed by the possibility of working in a big law firm. I spent the summer after my second year doing just that. I hated it. But I still loved law. I ended up taking a position, newly created by the organization, at which I could combine my law training and editing skills. I’ve been there ever since (almost 30 years).

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I started college intending to major in chemistry. At my college (Reed) because of core requirements first-year students basically were able to take one course per semester in their major, but many courses were year-long. Somehow I made an impression on my chemistry instructor in my first semester and he invited me to add a second chem course in my second semester: quantitative analysis (QA), while continuing with the intro course. This was, however, an overload (actually it was a half-course).

So things looked good, right? The first thing we did in the QA course was to calibrate our burettes, because precise quantitative measurement was critical to all the experiments that would run. Then things started going wrong. On experiment after experiment, I was getting the wrong answer. Repeated every experiment 5 times, then 7-10 times, to increase precision of my estimates. This is how I learned first-hand the difference between precision and accuracy. Very low standard error, but wrong! And I was spending 10-15 hours per week in the lab trying to get things right. This impacted my study in other courses (humanities, math, Russian), in what at Reed is in any case a very demanding program.

Next year I decided that maybe chemistry wasn’t for me. I come from a family of scientists (physics, geology and geochemistry) and engineers (aerospace). But I decided in frustration to go to my second-phase plan which was a possible career in law. In place of chem 210, I took political science. So my first “career change” was from chemistry to law/political science; and I was only beginning my sophomore year of college.

At some point late in my second year, I was rummaging around my dorm room and found my old QA chem lab book. I looked at the calculations I’d made in calibrating my equipment – right there on page 1. OMIGOD! I’d made an error, probably misread my sliderule or wrote the numbers down wrong. Because of this, every experiment I had done during the QA course was bound to produce the wrong answer: very precise, but wrong. Whether the measurement was on the high or low side depended on where the instrument was used in the analysis. I went back to the chem teacher, who confirmed my recalibration but didn’t have the data to check my experimental results. Nonetheless, the damage was done. And my mind was no longer into chemistry. (Lesson in life: always double-check your work!)

The next critical career decision point was in my senior year: academic career (PhD) vs. law. I decided to let nature make the decision. I applied to just two doctoral programs (both of which had a specialty of Russian studies alongside political science), and four law schools (might have been another, my memory isn’t perfect on this). I took all the exams (GRE, LSAT). And I threw the dice. Well damn, I got into every place I applied to (doctoral programs at UWis and Princeton; law schools at Berkeley, Chicago, Hastings, and Stanford). I had reservations about law as a career – was it intellectually interesting or challenging, or was it mainly “for the money”? I talked to a lot of people, including some alumni who were lawyers. I chose graduate school and a PhD.

Thus I set myself on an academic career. Even though my mother sometimes would tell me “you can still become a lawyer,” I never considered a switch. It’s too late to switch now; I had a great career and I’m retired.

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@bookmouse - Thanks for the story… I only wish I had had some golden handcuffs at some point. Retirement for me was just the removal of a paycheck. Yikes!

@rosered55 - That’s great that you were able to combine careers. My S1 got his JD, but not interested in being a lawyer. He’s following his passion with encryption/privacy law. Funny: <<then i=“” got=“” my=“” first-semester=“” chemistry=“” grades:=“” scotch=“” that=“” plan!=“”>> The same happened to me when I considered a bioengineering major, but after my first biology course, scotch that plan!

@mackinaw - “slide rule”…? You certainly ARE a “Senior” member. Academia was a career I always wanted. I’ve taught at the HS and university levels, and was long time Board member of an organization where I the only non-university professor (nothing to do with ANY of the career choices). Here I am begging for donations to the scholarship fund of the organization. Was I really that fat seven years ago? https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=si0cq4_qpcQ

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@digmedia Ancient. Handheld electronic calculators only began to become common but still not cheap around 1971. Of course we had access to big mechanical Marchant calculators.

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@mackinaw - I too used a slide rule in college. I can remember the price of my first handheld calculator: $71 (incl tax).

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Headed off to college to study chemistry or physics. Was a potential physics major my first year, but struggled with the math. Started sophomore year as a chemistry major, and enrolled in an archaeology class to fulfill a distribution requirement. Archaeology 101 met the hour before Chem 101. I graduated as an archaeology major.

First career change: MS Soil Science

Second career change: MS Ed TESOL

I’m not dead yet, so there is every chance I’ll change careers again.

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@happymomof1 - Love it!

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UW-Madison (Wisconsin) admits all freshmen to the university as a whole. This means your proposed major/none does not influence your acceptance. It also means flexibility in making changes. I have been told many/most entering freshmen will change their minds. My top 5-10 grad school rated university’s undergrad chemistry major Honors course eons ago was different than yours! There was one Wang calculator in the lab. One friend had a “$100” calculator that did less than today’s freebies. My trauma was redoing a PChem punch data card multiple times for many digits for one lab. Hated typing (still do). Do not recall needing to calibrate equipment.

I started in chemistry, got a BA in it (like the white tassel better than yellow and met both Ba and BS requirements). Chose medical over graduate school. Decades later a fellow UW woman chemistry major who did the opposite and I had a conversation wondering if we should have gone the other’s route. I do like the knowledge and skills I have- like knowing as much in depth chemistry as I learned even though much of it not needed. Likewise so much medical knowledge not evidently “needed” in any given specialty but it’s that underwater part of the iceberg that supports the part visible.

HS freshman science included learning to use a slide rule in my day. Now elementary school kids get typing skills so they can use a computer fast.

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I thought I would have one major (probably political science) but ended up majoring in a quantitative field (no switch but change of plans) – I was always interested in thinking hard (and usually quantitatively) about social phenomena. I got into the best graduate school in the country in a quantitative field but I quit after a year because I was interested in practical applications and they really just wanted me to prove theorems. I then worked for a year at an NGO focusing on analyzing the criminal justice system. While there, I applied to both law school and other quantitative departments in my field – I saw the opportunity to in effect start a field taking a more quantitative approach to certain areas of law. I was accepted at almost all of the prestigious law and graduate schools and started grad school/law school intending to do law the second year. I decided against law after talking to some lawyers about what they do (long story on what led to the switch; interestingly enough, although I never attended, the law school I had accepted still considers me an alum). While completing my PhD, I recognized that I didn’t want to be an academic in my field and probably wanted to go into business but needed to figure out a niche. I began work in a field that was just getting started after meeting a couple of people who were just starting work in that field and actually completed two papers in that field prior to completing my PhD, though I didn’t submit them for publication until after completing my dissertation.

I was able to get a post-doc in my newly chosen field and then an assistant professorship at a high-end business school, where I expecting to teach for two years – I thought it would be a good way to head into business and a good place to have been from. In fact, I spent 6 or 7 years there and coauthored one book, which according to an analysis I saw is the 6th most cited book in the field (although having read some of the papers that cite it, I am not sure the all of authors have actually read it or understood it). Ah well. I decided it was time for a change and talked my way into a job at an investment bank. (I had taught myself a fair bit of finance and corporate strategy and a little bit of accounting and organizational behavior while I was a post-doc/professor). After a year, I went to work for the family office of a wealthy family, where I did a broad version of what we would now call private equity. After 4-5 years of that, I decided that I never wanted to work for anyone again. I turned down a job with another family office and began consulting using my academic background (as augmented by my i-banking and PE experience) half-time and helping smaller firms get started/raise capital. I helped someone start a hedge fund and my quantitative skills and prestigious academic background made me helpful and so I started spending half time consulting and half time on the hedge fund and did that for a bit under 10 years before we decided to fold the hedge fund. At that point, I decided to work full-time on the consulting and began building a firm. I’ve been running that for a number of years and we have a small but thriving firm, which has provided really interesting work for me and for my team. I have coauthored another book in my field – I just learned it has sold over 40K copies which surprised me. I still teach executive courses at my old university and am beginning to teach as well at a new one. I’d say that the book and the academic affiliations help create business and aura for our firm.

In short, I probably switched career directions once by applying to law school, a second time by not going, a third time by switching fields after my PhD to become a professor in a new field that I was helping to create, a fourth time when I left to go into finance (probably no big switch from i-banking to family office), a fifth switch to start a hedge fund and be a consultant, and perhaps a sixth switch to drop the hedge fund and just focus on consulting.

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Incidentally, I love what I do and can’t imagine either switching again or retiring.

I almost had another step in the career trajectory. Early in my consulting career, I was sort of offered a position in the US government (Deputy Undersecretary of Policy or maybe Deputy Secretary of Policy – I’m not great on titles – or something like that in a field that I knew nothing about). I was invited to go to DC to be interviewed by the new Secretary but that before they would finalize, I had to agree that if he offered me the job at the end of the interview, I would say yes. Given that I was supposed to be his right-hand man, saying yes without meeting him seemed crazy and I turned down the interview. I’m not sure I would have said yes and I’m pretty sure my wife would not have wanted to live in DC, but who knows.

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I entered the university as a journalism major, then realized I didn’t like to do interviews. Flirted with anthropology but decided to major in English Literature and be “pre-law.” That idea went out the window when I volunteered to read for a blind law student and discovered just how tedious the subject could be. By the beginning of my senior year, my adviser pointed out that I had almost equal credits in lit and psych, and suggested that I pick up a minor in psych. However, I had so many hours that, with two extra classes, I would qualify for bachelors in both. I ended up with a B.A. in English Literature and a B.S. in Psychology.
Meanwhile, ALL of my employment in college had been in the computer field, as a proctor and computer operator (back in the days when it was all done on mainframes.) After school, I got a job in D.C. at a small software company as a software designer. I hated the company, and quit without another job. The next day, I was hired by UMUC to edit the materials used for their distance learning curriculum, and to “troubleshoot” computer programs for a new distance learning initiative. I founded the software quality assurance department there, and quit seven years later to start my own QA firm. After three years I was tired of the travel and took a job with a D.C. consulting firm as a senior business analyst. I got to work at the beginning of the software development process, but I was still feeling the work stress that I had attributed to working against deadlines as the last department (QA) in the development cycle. My husband, toddler and I decided to return to my small Midwest hometown of 4,000 which obviously didn’t need a business analyst. I had a second child, then got an opportunity to work for a not-for-profit startup that worked to revitalize small town business districts. Three years later, I reluctantly quit due to childcare conflicts. Just a few months later, I got an opportunity to job-share a position as youth librarian at our local public library. Several years later, we had to move for my husband’s career. I decided to apply only to non-for-profits, and I’m currently the volunteer director at a small museum. Despite making much more money early in my career, my last two jobs have been by far the most satisfying.

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Except for the ‘having 2 kids’ part, my life now is absolutely NOTHING like I envisaged it when I was a student.

I started college as a pre-med biology major. One change of major (in junior year), with plans to pursue a PhD for a career in academia. But a summer internship during grad school changed my mind, and I left school with just a Masters degree. Though I’ve been in the same career field for over 25 years, the career has unfolded with multiple changes of employer and multiple int’l changes of scenery.

Like Yogi Berra famously said:
“When You Come to a Fork in the Road, Take It!”

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Seems that this is no longer true for engineering majors. https://www.engr.wisc.edu/admissions/undergraduate-admissions/ indicates that applicants can apply for direct admission to engineering majors. However, it comes with an unusual catch in that there may be high college GPA requirements to stay in the major, as described at https://www.engr.wisc.edu/academics/student-services/academic-advising/first-year-undergraduate-students/progression-requirements/ . Students not directly admitted to the engineering major who wish to change into the engineering major also have an admission process to do so, which restricts the student’s flexibility if one of his/her possible majors is an engineering major.

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Post #14. I nearly forgot the 2 career mid-life crises I had when I was determined to quit work and go to law school, then quit work to get an MBA, but then changed my mind.

I’ve taken every grad school test except the MCAT. If I took that, then I really will have come full circle…

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@GMTplus7 The way the lottery of life works, most of the major and career changes that we’ve described also involved geographic changes and who, if anyone, we ended up marrying. I surely wouldn’t ever have met my wife, the mother of our two children, had I gone to law school or had I become a chemist. Although I can imagine that I might have ended up studying chemistry in graduate school at Wisconsin (where I met my future wife in an economics course) I probably never would have met her in the sea of 33,000 students. And my kids would be . . . different and not “ours.”

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I majored in Electrical Engineering…followed the suggested curriculum all the way through.
Realized I didn’t like hands on labby stuff so got a job as a Systems Engineer which is more logical.

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I used to borrow reverse Polish notation calculators from the science library.

I went to college think I’d major in History and Literature. Hated the history course I took (which was really more a political theory course), hated the Shakespeare course I took (which was taught by the worst professor I have ever had) and decided to major in Visual and Environmental Studies instead since I’d really loved a Freshman seminar on Prints and Printmaking. My grandparents (who died when I was very young so I don’t remember them) had been architects and it seemed like something I might enjoy. I ended up taking all the grad school courses in Architectural history along with a bunch of art, design and film courses. Couldn’t have enjoyed my major more. Did become an architect and never looked back. Though I did do six months as a librarian in charge of a professor’s library at Caltech which was one of the best and most enjoyable parttime gigs I’ve done.