Stuck. Major Change or...?

jjwinkle
Fri, 22 May 2015 20:49:16 +0000

It looks like you would be a good laboratory worker.

There are three problems:

1. GPA

You worry too much about GPA. Don’t worry about it unless it’s so bad your university isn’t going to let you continue as a student. Undergraduate research is nice, but not necessary. I don’t know what the other activities are that your low GPA prevents you from doing, but I presume you would have detailed them if you regarded them as really important.

Of course, GPA can be raised. For example, you can do what I did: PERSEVERE. I went to the University of California at the age of 31 (twelve years after I had last been a full-time student) to get a chemistry degree, and I got a D on my first math test. I resolved to do problems every available waking minute. After that I did math and physics problems ELEVEN hours every week day and 25 hours every weekend as long as I was doing math and physics (about the first two years). I kept a log of my study time. I graduated with a 3.3 GPA, and it was actually higher than that in the math courses.

It may be that there is a community college convenient to you where you can take some course(s) which you can get credit for and in which you likely will get higher grades that will bring up your GPA.

You can get a tutor and/or take a study skills course and/or read study skills books. Likely your university can get you access to these. For a general tip, I say this: think about the material of your courses ALL the time.

2. Becoming mentally proficient

The fundamental point of higher education is development of mental proficiency. This enhances a person’s attractiveness to employers and facilitates the person navigating well in life. It fundamentally explains why society promotes higher education. Unless one has one’s heart set on a specific occupation accessible no other way, the quest for general mental proficiency is the only good reason to insist on a 4-year degree.

Science is a particularly good discipline for developing mental proficiency, because it entails logic so much. If you don’t do science coursework, you will not develop as much in that regard – and that matters.

3. Getting a job

For high ability to get a job I see three paths for you.

You could do a very vocationally oriented biology-related degree, such as nursing, clinical laboratory technology, x-ray technician, etc. Among broad occupational fields, the health field is projected by the Bureau of Labor Statistics to have the most job openings in the next few years. Some of these job training tracks can be done at a community college. They may not be offered at your current university, so you might need to transfer. You could likely thus get an easier science education.

You can do accounting. You will have good job prospects with that. But you will have to live the rest of your life in acceptance of the principle that something you loved, science, had to be sacrificed because the practicality of certain employment was more important.

Try to develop yourself as much as possible as a laboratory worker. Even people without degrees can get work in environmental analysis labs; a student or a graduate certainly can, whatever the GPA is. If your university has a work-study program (it’s considered part of financial aid) and you qualify for it, try to get a work-study job in a campus lab. (I did that a lot). In the process you are likely to get known to people who can offer a full-time job later (as was the case for me). While you are a student try to get into any instrumental analysis laboratory course you can, because that kind of coursework very much helps to get a good laboratory career going.

Don’t overlook that how comfortable you feel during the ~4 years of college is less important than how you feel during the decades after it.