jobs for math majors

silversas
Wed, 26 Oct 2011 09:13:00 +0000

Think of yourself as really lucky! You still have some time/wiggle room to explore and math is one of those degrees that proves you are smart and can apply yourself, and can take you into all sorts of directions.

This is the moment to stretch yourself to find out what you love, and to match your intellectual talents to your personality, your drive, your interests, your passions, possibly the economy, and the options.

I was EXACTLY where you are once! A math major deciding not to be a pure mathematician, as I always wanted to be. Other people pushed me into what “they” thought I would fit – and those ideas are fine and should be appreciated – but you can also go beyond them.

What math classes do you LIKE best? (eg my HS son loved calculus, and is now taking a college Linear Algebra course and finds it boring. I liked analysis in theory, but it made me crazy and I was bad at it, but I had a lot of fun with combinatorics and group theory.)

Also, try this exercise my roommate back in the day made me do: imagine what you would do for a living if salary, status, education, location were not an option. Be 4 years old again! What really makes your heart flutter! My secret fantasy at that time (I still have it) was to be an airplane pilot. So she made me explore every route to doing so. Could I transfer to any major that led to that? Could I enlist in a service (back then the Navy was the only way a woman could become a pilot?) I figured out where to take flying lessons, but alas, no public transportation there – and I didn’t know how to drive.

It was very liberating… and while that was going on, it loosened up my “I must, I should…” preconceptions. We also talked about what I wanted to do with my life in a big theme way “help people” – ok, you can do that with your day to day work, or outside work. And what should my work day look like to bring out my best work? Well, I had realized I could not do my best work as a mathematician precisely because I could not be solitary for many, many, many long hours of intense intellectual work.

Think these things through , and whatever makes sense to you, on your own, and talk them over with others. Talk to your math professors and your department about options. Do some wild Googling. If you have to, take some time before you invest in graduate school. I had a job lined up doing technical writing with Honeywell during the temporary time I was thinking of a PhD in Poetics (please do not laugh!)

At the last minute I threw my hat into the law school admissions game, having never ever met a lawyer – but back then it seemed to fit my helps others, intellectually challenging, sometimes solitary sometimes interactive, I’d get to wear something other than jeans, I could support myself, I could integrate math/science criteria.

I’m not doing the kind of law I thought I would do (environmental or occupational health and safety or medical ethics), but I love what I do and I KNOW that my math degree has helped get me to the top of my field (civil rights)-- it makes applications stand out for one – but it trained me to think creatively, look at the essence of arguments, find the errors in bad logic, be intellectually honest and original, and I can work with proving up a case with data and stats while it scares many others to death!

So not so much about me, I am but one single example, it is just to show one person’s outcome. There is a wonderful path for you… and it might be very, very, very math related…actually doing math every day in a setting you just hadn’t anticipated, or it might be using your well trained “math” mind in a completely different field.

Feel free to pm me, but I don’t always check every day.