Is My Plan Realistic and Worth It?

sschoe2
Wed, 17 Apr 2013 13:24:12 +0000

It doesn’t sound like math and science are your thing. I think you should move in a different direction. You are working yourself to tears persuing something that doesn’t sound compatible with you aptitude and doesn’t offer great prospects anyways. even vets the median income for them is ~$60k and considering they have $200k in loans to repay that can be quite tough to live on.

Vet tech is a rather low paying dead end job. You work your butt off dealing with often dangerous unpredictable animals for ~$25-35k. It really only needs an AS or Vo-tech degree.

Forensic science requires good chemistry skills even for DNA. Also the job pays mediocre ~$35-45k, is incredibly competive with only state and a few local a fed govt hiring and the job itself is rather boring. All the methods are well developed, validated, characterized so you are basically doing an assembly line of GC/MS or DNA over and over again filling out hordes of paperwork exactly correct because so much as an incorrectly formatted date will get the evidence tossed and you fired. Lawyers don’t argue the science as it is unbeleivably well established and validated, they focus on BS like paperwork and try to paint you as incompetent.

Also I strongly discourage forensic science degrees. All forensics departments hire chem and biochem majors with I think ~30 hours of chemistry and biochhem&mol Bio for DNA. They don’t prefer forensic majors at all as there is no point. They train you from the ground up anyways because they have to be able to demonstate you know what you are doing and have been properly trained for your work to be accepted. All you end up doing is severly limiting your prospects as it is easy to make a chem major a forensic tech but no company is going to train a forensic major to be a chemist.

Some forensic grad programs are good for scientists looking to move into director positions or become professors.