Why I majored in Chemistry

[ksmith]

Swiped from deannahoak



In fact, I was a double major in English/Art. But I doubted my ability to get a job with those degrees--these were the Reagan Recession year--and I felt like a quitter for leaving chemistry. So back to chemistry I went.

If I had it to do over, I'd have double-majored in Chem/History/Art History/whatever it took and gone into art restoration.

You scored as English. You should be an English major! Your passion lies in writing and expressing yourself creatively, and you hate it when you are inhibited from doing so. Pursue that interest of yours! </td> English 100% Journalism 100% Linguistics 83% Psychology 75% Philosophy 75% Theater 67% Art 67% Mathematics 58% Chemistry 58% Anthropology 50% Sociology 50% Biology 50% Dance 50% Engineering 25% What is your Perfect Major? created with QuizFarm.com

Comments

[janni.livejournal.com]

I started off as a chem major--it was only the realization that I was really, really unhappy doing lab work, and that my whole life would be lab work if I continued, that led to me getting up the nerve to change over to English, because I was scared I'd never managed to earn a living there, too.

(With a second major in bio. Just to prove to myself that I was ditching a science career by choice, and not because I couldn't hack it. Even though I sorta couldn't.)

[kristine-smith.livejournal.com]

Chemistry was not my best subject--I should have majored in English or History. My Verbal score on standardized tests was always about 200 points higher than my Math score. I really don't think analytically.

But I enjoyed synthesizing compounds. I started out in Engineering, which would have been a real disaster. I was the only one of my Engineering friends who liked chem lab, and figured I was on to something.

I was an average chemist at best. But hey, this first career will help finance the second career, so it wasn't all bad.

[janni.livejournal.com]

If I'd enjoyed synthesizing compounds, or lab work in general, I think I would have been okay with being an everage chemist, and would have stuck it out. It was the idea of being average and hating the work that I realized made no sense--I had to either enjoy it, or be unusually good at it, or what was the point?

[kristine-smith.livejournal.com]

I will say that I seldom enjoyed workplace chemistry as much as I did the school stuff--never synthesized another compound after I left. OTOH, given some of the reagents I would have been exposed to on a regular basis, I'm glad I got out of synthetic work when I did.