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What was your major in college?

samiwas said:
I started college majoring in Civil Engineering, because that's what my father convinced me would be a "financially solid field". I had no desire to be an engineer, but at that point in my life, I was kind of beholden to the parents. I had always been a very creative person, and always interested in lighting and computer stuff, and theatre.

So, I went off to school to study engineering. I lasted less than a year. Once I started Calculus 3, I realized that this is not how I wanted to spend my life. So after some talking with the college advisor, and a highly emotional call to my parents, I switched my major to Theatre Design and Production, in which I received my BFA. My father was petrified that I would turn out to be a starving artist delivering pizzas for a living.

However, since the day I graduated, I have been gainfully employed doing all sorts of different lighting jobs in the entertainment industry. The only times I've accepted a dollar from my parents since graduation was when our special-needs son required a procedure that insurance did not cover (15 years after graduation).

Besides theatre, I've also been active in concert production, large-scale corporate events, touring ice shows, large-scale museum exhibits, television shows, and feature films. I get to create not only with my passion for lighting, but also with the computer stuff (drawings, 3d models, databases, networking, etc). I'm doing exactly what I wanted to do since I was a kid, and making some pretty good money while doing it (had one six figure year). During the height of things, I was doing well enough that I only had to work outside of the house about 6 months a year.

Contrast this to my siblings who both went to high dollar schools, and one who followed with law school. One was bankrupt and debt-ridden within ten years and had to sell her condo just to get out of debt, while the other just couldn't seem to find himself and is currently job hunting in a new city.

Having the "right" degree is no guarantee that you will make good money, just as having a so-called "useless" degree, or no degree at all is no guarantee that you will be forever poor. What matters is your knowledge and passion for what you want to do.
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+1. I guess I have one of those "useless" communication degrees. I'm happily employed in an industry that I love. I'm not making all the money in the world right now, but it's sufficient for a first job out of college. The degree doesn't matter much, it's about your experience, intelligence, and perhaps above all, effort.
 
63dot said:
Us creative types, whether we are good or not, usually don't end up as happy doctors, accountants, and chemical engineers.
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Why do you think this? As an accountant, doctor, or chemical engineer, you might be able to have a much bigger house, nicer car, and go on fancy vacations to Europe every now and then, but you likely work hard and long with a bit of stress to obtain that.

Until we had the kid, we had all the free time in the world and never thought about money, because there was plenty to keep us going. We would sometimes go an entire month without working, and we'd use that time to sleep late, rent a cabin up in the mountains, take trips to see friends, etc. Until very recently, I hadn't had a single dollar on a credit card in many years. All of that is happiness to me; not having a bigger, better house and nicer car.

And since many of my friends are in creative fields, it's what I know. I see them all as happier than the ones who are accountants, office slugs, managers, etc. Even the ones who don't make much money seem happier in general.
 
Biology B.S.
Physiology/Neuroscience M.S.
MBA

Have worked in IT (DBA) so none of the degrees apply directly. I enjoy I.T. but if I'd stayed in Biology I would be able to make the same amount I make now. It didn't seem that way years ago. It seemed like IT was always going to pay so much more. But a flood of people who weren't really all that interested in it mixed with those who were really excited by it so there's a mixture of skill levels with many, many completely non-technical managers/directors who can't tell the difference. All that to say that it was more fun 10 years ago than now.

I actually love learning new computer languages, infrastructure, etc. but I often work alongside people who never do any outside reading or self training. It's just whatever they learn on the job. Non-technical executive management don't notice the difference and cannot tell the difference between using Excel versus Oracle to manage data. To them it's all the same difficulty level and they don't want to hear why they are different. Frustrating.

So, if I were to do it all over again, I would either get a PhD in Biology and just get a lot of computers for my lab to experiment with; or, if I stayed in IT, I would not take positions with technical luddites in executive management.
 
My major was Architectural Studies from UW Seattle.

Today I work as a front end developer.
 
Bachelors in History with a minor in Classical Studies

Masters in Library and Information Studies

I can't find a job. I work in retail right now.
 
samiwas said:
Why do you think this? As an accountant, doctor, or chemical engineer, you might be able to have a much bigger house, nicer car, and go on fancy vacations to Europe every now and then, but you likely work hard and long with a bit of stress to obtain that.

Until we had the kid, we had all the free time in the world and never thought about money, because there was plenty to keep us going. We would sometimes go an entire month without working, and we'd use that time to sleep late, rent a cabin up in the mountains, take trips to see friends, etc. Until very recently, I hadn't had a single dollar on a credit card in many years. All of that is happiness to me; not having a bigger, better house and nicer car.

And since many of my friends are in creative fields, it's what I know. I see them all as happier than the ones who are accountants, office slugs, managers, etc. Even the ones who don't make much money seem happier in general.
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The recession has caused me to go back to IT. The upside is that it's good money and the company I interned for made $10-15K a visit (putting in specialized POS systems/registers/network) and even those folk (who owned the POS business) were not "happy". Yes, you could make in a few months what most people do in a decade but just like rock stars, professional baseball players, or whoever is in that range, they find stuff to be unhappy about that keeps them up at night. I know all jobs from minimum wage to company ownership all have their headaches, but big money stress kills.

The stress level is tremendous as many of these IT guys who own their own POS business travel all around the country and only hear about things when they go horribly wrong. Nobody ever once called back and said they were happy. When the rest of the people in the real world were happy to move into the $50K or $100K range, a POS company owner feels let down if competition makes 7 digits and you don't.

My friend works for his dad's POS business and there's no way in hell he wants to take over. It'a valued at around 10 mil. and I know he will sell it off. It's better to work for now for an average salary and have your weekends off than be a millionaire and brag (or complain) that you literally haven't had a day off in ten or twenty years. I can see where a famous actor or director who loves what they do says they have worked steadily every day (like a Robert DeNiro or Steven Spielberg), but not a cash register installment business, network cabling company, or you name it (hopping restaurant, top women's boutique dress shop, or non-stop mini mart). Who really wants what ends up as a forgettable job/business that while making you rich will also guarantee you never have a day off until the last day of your life?

I am sure everybody on this thread knows or may even have that rich uncle/dad/mom who has that lucrative greasy spoon restaurant, retail operation, or successful plumbing business that has made them multi-millionaires years ago but at the same time has become a 7 day a week sentence. If anybody here thinks that it's worth it, chime in! There's a difference between getting ahead versus incarcerating yourself into a hellish existence you can't get out of because tons of employees (and the community at large) depend on you to be on your game every day.
 
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Went to college with the intention of majoring in business, dropped out after one semester. Now starting my own company :D
 
Southern Dad said:
B.S. in Computer & Information Sciences. Do not work in the field and only ever did briefly. Hated it… Computers are fun when you don't HAVE to do it.
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So true. I am going to go back into the field after four years away from it. The pay is unbeatable compared to anything else, especially in norcal, but bills require it for now and I want to finish up uber-expensive grad school, but not so much to make more money at my age, but to simply finish the unfinished units. Most people in high tech don't have degrees related to their field anyway since there's far more work than there is a supply of CS/IT grads.

Other than that I often think that IT/computers is like a jail sentence, albeit a highly paid jail sentence.
 
Biology, and almost finished with a double major in Religion. Weird mix, right?

Now, I'm working on my PhD in Bioinformatics (think Genetics, Computer Science and Statistics all rolled into one).
 
B.S. in MIS, then did 2 years of further A.S. in Computer Networking (90's up to around 2000). Always wanted to do the networking gig, but was never able to find a job at the end of several decent-sounding leads.

Ended up going into the bar biz with family for about 4 years, which was definitely interesting. After Katrina (why the biz stopped suddenly), there were especially no good tech jobs around (I guess they all needed really experienced people to get everything up and running again), so I went into retail, and still there today (most of the past 9 years with the same company, at least.)

I'd love to find something that pays better, but I'm so far from my schooling at this point, that sales would likely be the next thing, unless we find a business to go into again....
 
BS in Computer Engineering. At my uni, you have to take most of the same required classes as a CS student would and an EE student would.

It's pretty much like tinkering with arduinos, except on a larger scale. I work for a company that makes satellites and other odds and ends. For the most part, I write code sure, but it's a blast! We make things that are.. literally out of this world, and contrary to the perceived notion that engineers are a bunch of basement dwelling nerds, I work with some pretty darn cool people.
 
samiwas said:
I started college majoring in Civil Engineering, because that's what my father convinced me would be a "financially solid field". I had no desire to be an engineer, but at that point in my life, I was kind of beholden to the parents. I had always been a very creative person, and always interested in lighting and computer stuff, and theatre.
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Truth in this post. My advisor at my first school started off life with a poly-sci degree until he figured he couldn't do anything with it before going back to get his Comp Science degree.

Me on the other hand, I'm 32 and this is my 3rd try at school. My first was right after high school where I was pressured in to going by the rents and I was going for a computer science degree. I didn't have to pay for school and wasn't incurring any debt thanks to a little inheritance from my grandfather and some smart investing. I ended up quitting.

A few years later I went back to a tech school and jumped in feet first. Unfortunately, they over promised and under delivered. They weren't even accredited so my few credits didn't count. Fortunately I got a good paying IT job so leaving there wasn't a big issue. Well, 8 years late I got laid off and with no degree or certifications, it's back to square 1. Fortunately I'm ready for school this time and motivated to do good. My 2nd semester in is looking to be my 2nd on the president's list and those BS gen-ed classes that I didn't want to waste time with the first time I went are now easy grades that I know I can breeze through until it gets time to do the hard work.

This is a 2 year, college that when I finish with I'll have certifications in Net+, Sec+, and Cisco with 2 associates in Cyber Security and Network Engineering that I will be able to transfer to a 4 year where I can pursue my Bachelors. I decided to go the 2 year community/tech so I could at least get some kind of entry level job because otherwise, I'm stuck where I'm at for at least 4 years with no chance for advancement.
 
samiwas said:
I started college majoring in Civil Engineering, because that's what my father convinced me would be a "financially solid field". I had no desire to be an engineer, but at that point in my life, I was kind of beholden to the parents. I had always been a very creative person, and always interested in lighting and computer stuff, and theatre.

So, I went off to school to study engineering. I lasted less than a year. Once I started Calculus 3, I realized that this is not how I wanted to spend my life. So after some talking with the college advisor, and a highly emotional call to my parents, I switched my major to Theatre Design and Production, in which I received my BFA. My father was petrified that I would turn out to be a starving artist delivering pizzas for a living.

However, since the day I graduated, I have been gainfully employed doing all sorts of different lighting jobs in the entertainment industry. The only times I've accepted a dollar from my parents since graduation was when our special-needs son required a procedure that insurance did not cover (15 years after graduation).

Besides theatre, I've also been active in concert production, large-scale corporate events, touring ice shows, large-scale museum exhibits, television shows, and feature films. I get to create not only with my passion for lighting, but also with the computer stuff (drawings, 3d models, databases, networking, etc). I'm doing exactly what I wanted to do since I was a kid, and making some pretty good money while doing it (had one six figure year). During the height of things, I was doing well enough that I only had to work outside of the house about 6 months a year.

Contrast this to my siblings who both went to high dollar schools, and one who followed with law school. One was bankrupt and debt-ridden within ten years and had to sell her condo just to get out of debt, while the other just couldn't seem to find himself and is currently job hunting in a new city.

Having the "right" degree is no guarantee that you will make good money, just as having a so-called "useless" degree, or no degree at all is no guarantee that you will be forever poor. What matters is your knowledge and passion for what you want to do.
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Great post, one which is well worth reading and thinking about. Very well done and very, very well said.


63dot said:
+1 Great post and I hope the kids thinking college here will read it!

Life is too short and one should do what they want. My parents thought that I would quit being a rock and roll musician so they sent me off to college at 18. Though I so wish I got that creative related BFA too like you, I did get the safe boring degree but played music a good 15 years after high school so it was a compromise.

I wish I had the guts you did and made up my mind before I graduated and put my foot down. Us creative types, whether we are good or not, usually don't end up as happy doctors, accountants, and chemical engineers.
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I think that samiwas knew himself pretty well before he went to college, and thus had a good idea where his interested and strengths lay; most 18 year olds - even if they know themselves enough to know what they don't want to study (even if parental hearts and ambitions are set on this)- may not know themselves well enough to know what exactly it is they wish to do and study. Samiwas clearly did - which is fantastic - and that clearly stood to him, as he was able to chart a course where he wanted to go.

samiwas said:
Why do you think this? As an accountant, doctor, or chemical engineer, you might be able to have a much bigger house, nicer car, and go on fancy vacations to Europe every now and then, but you likely work hard and long with a bit of stress to obtain that.

Until we had the kid, we had all the free time in the world and never thought about money, because there was plenty to keep us going. We would sometimes go an entire month without working, and we'd use that time to sleep late, rent a cabin up in the mountains, take trips to see friends, etc. Until very recently, I hadn't had a single dollar on a credit card in many years. All of that is happiness to me; not having a bigger, better house and nicer car.

And since many of my friends are in creative fields, it's what I know. I see them all as happier than the ones who are accountants, office slugs, managers, etc. Even the ones who don't make much money seem happier in general.
Click to expand...

You obviously enjoy and value what you do, and this matters more than income, imagined, possible and actual. As it happens, I agree with your outlook entirely, and very well said.
 
BS in biochemistry
MS in nanoscience (currently doing my thesis)

Lab work is currently a disaster. Sometimes I wish I had gotten into bioinformatics where things couldn't mess up that badly. Only, I got a D when I took that bioinformatics course, so I thought "screw that".
 
VI™;20253081 said:
Truth in this post.
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Scepticalscribe said:
Great post, one which is well worth reading and thinking about. Very well done and very, very well said.
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Thank you both for the kind words!

I think that samiwas knew himself pretty well before he went to college, and thus had a good idea where his interested and strengths lay; most 18 year olds - even if they know themselves enough to know what they don't want to study (even if parental hearts and ambitions are set on this)- may not know themselves well enough to know what exactly it is they wish to do and study. Samiwas clearly did - which is fantastic - and that clearly stood to him, as he was able to chart a course where he wanted to go.

You obviously enjoy and value what you do, and this matters more than income, imagined, possible and actual. As it happens, I agree with your outlook entirely, and very well said.
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One of the most brilliant minds of our lifetimes said:

You can fail at what you don't want. So you might as well take a chance on doing what you love.​

Okay, so it was Jim Carrey. But he kind of nailed it. You have one life. We all do. No one on this board, no one they know, and no one they will ever know is any different: they all have just one life. So, why are so many people hell bent on making it as difficult as possible to live it?

I do enjoy what I do. Even on a bad day, I'd still rather do this than put on a tie and report to some office to be barked at by some ******* manager. Every day is different for me, and I get to directly see the results of my work. It's pretty awesome.
 
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