This is the general dilemma I know I went through when I was trying to figure out what degree path to go down. When I’ve been at the top of my game in school, most professors have told me I’m smart enough to go down whatever career path I wanted to. While it was nice for so many smart people to think I was also intelligent, it did absolutely nothing for me to help narrow down the avenues I could take my career.
Prior to College
In junior high, we took career aptitude tests and then job shadowed at a business in the local community. My highest career aptitude indicated my best fit was in marketing and advertising, so I ended up getting to tour a local business that produced and sold fishing line. I do distinctly recall obtaining a quality fishing line to give to my dad after completing the job shadowing, and that was my fondest memory of the event. All I really remember otherwise was that outside of the secretary at the front door, there weren’t any other women around, which 12 year old me found pretty strange at the time. Overall, the experience didn’t have a strong impact on my career leanings either way.
In high school, my dream career was to be a journalist. I wanted to make a difference by breaking news on cutting-edge topics nobody had heard about before. However, I started paying attention to the negative impacts the internet and the Great Recession had on writing as a career option, particularly for journalists working at newspapers. Seeing the viability of that career option as shaky, I decided against pursuing it further.
Pondering Degrees After High School
I then considered a medical degree of some sort, such as being a chiropractor or physical therapist. (I actually wrote I wanted to be a chiropractor as my dream job in 6th grade, as back then I saw the job as being “easy” and well-paid.) Being in a direct role helping patients heal was my main passion I wanted to fulfill going down this path. However, after looking into these fields, the amount of debt I had to take on to graduate easily went into the 6 digit range, and I was missing a fair amount of prerequisites to even apply to these programs that would require years of effort to catch up on and take. Cross that option off the list.
Following that, I wondered about social work. During my time getting my undergraduate and graduate degrees I gained experience in places such as independent living centers and youth rights organizations. But again, I found things that gave me pause. Many of the people I talked to who worked at these organizations were not paid well and were emotionally exhausted from the work they had to do. Seeing that a Master’s degree was starting to be a requirement for many of these positions as well, I hesitated and saw it as another financially unwise choice to go down this path.
You’ll notice a theme throughout all of these paths I considered that ultimately derailed me, and it came down to money every time. I determined that if following my passion led me to a decaying career (journalism), six digit student loans (medical school), or limited career pay (social work), it was likely in the long run going to kill the initial passion I had for the career in the first place.
Pivoting Towards STEM
I then changed paths and ultimately went down the path of getting the “practical” degrees that I did. I started with a Bachelor’s with a major in Mathematics and a minor in Economics. My initial goal with those degrees was to become an actuary, but after talking with a few actuaries, decided that it may not be the best fit for me. Knowing my options were somewhat limited only having a Bachelor’s degree, I then followed up with getting a Master’s in Statistics with the goal of getting into data science. Throughout my collegiate education, I worked as hard as possible to maintain a high GPA.
Now, I would never say mathematics is my true passion, but it was always something I had a knack for. I used to think before grad school that I was quite competent in my mathematics classes relative to my classmates, and that encouraged me to pursue the field further as a viable career option. I didn’t hit on the right choice the first time with my degree with wanting to be an actuary, either. However, I was able to adapt accordingly to get to a career that fit me better as a data scientist.
I have no regrets going down this path, as it eventually exposed me to programming. With exposure to that topic in undergrad I realized that also came to me easily relative to my classmates, and if I had the ability to go and do everything again, I probably would have gone into computer science for a degree choice. But thankfully my current degree choice isn’t too far off, and if I ever wanted to pivot to a pure programming role it wouldn’t be too difficult with my academic background. I could always learn some technical skills through free online resources or textbooks if I wanted to brush up my skills on a particular programming language.
Now, imagine if I had gone for one of my initial passions instead. If I had gone into something like journalism or social work for a degree choice, I likely would have to go back to school to get into a programming oriented job, and it would not have been viable at all had I taken on the debt needed to get into the medical field as a physical therapist. Who knows, I may not have even learned that I had any aptitude for programming at all!
Of course, I recognize that not everyone has this level of flexibility in their career options. Some people, no matter how hard they work at it, will never be good at math. I focused on building up “scarcer” skillsets in the hopes that I might have a good career as a result, and I know I was privileged in even being able to do that.
But at no point was it ever easy. There are unique challenges that come with being a woman in STEM, and I know many women have faced far harsher barriers than I have in trying to enter the field. I had intense self-loathing problems in grad school due to newfound imposter syndrome, but now that I’ve had a year out of school to process the experience, I realized that I did the best that I could to get through. And as much I got mentally bruised and battered, I did survive the ordeal and my career will be better off in the long run as a result of going down this particular path.
Conclusion
It would be remiss of me to not mention Cal Newport’s influence in how I ended up choosing to focus on skills rather than pure passion. His book So Good They Can’t Ignore You helped solidify my view to focus on skills over passions. So if you’d like another resource that argues for the importance of skill mastery in having a successful career, I recommend checking that book out.
I’d also like to end this by saying that it’s never too late to pivot careers if you’re unhappy. Change will certainly not happen overnight, and the difficulty of pivoting will certainly vary based on your current life situation, but life is too short to be miserable working in a job that you hate.