Managing Future Income Risk
When I first came to the College I was Biology major intending to go to medical school to become a doctor which was a decision I made because I thought I would enjoy it. However after my first year, I realized that becoming a doctor was not what I wanted to do and just sort of randomly changed my major to Economics because I already had credits for some of the courses from high school. But most importantly, I changed my major to Economics because it would cost around two thousands dollars less than being a biology major due to the lab and other fees so I thought I would just change to an Economics major and then figure out what I want to do and then change to that major later.
During the beginning of my sophomore year, I was totally lost in what I wanted to do in the future and I wasn't really thinking about choosing my major in terms of the money I would earn the future, instead I was looking for a major that I enjoyed. However during the time I was taking an Economics Statistics course and I begun to realized that I actually found the statistics course to be really interesting. After many nights of researching potential majors that included statistics, I discovered the field of bio-statistics and the field felt perfect for me because it was a combination of two fields of interests for me which was biology and statistics with coding.
After finding the field I wanted to pursue I talked to my parents and older brothers about it saying that "I might change to a statistics major", however they recommended that I stay with the Economics major and also get a biology minor instead because the Economics major and biology minor would still work for going to graduate schools in bio-statistics. Both my father and one of my older brothers have PhDs in Statistics and found great statistics jobs so I trust them a lot in this department as they have much more experience with the process than I do. They have been very helpful in telling me what is worth my time and recommending me which courses to take and what activities I might be interested in. They are basically helping me avoid the mistakes that they did during their time in college.
So due to being so fortunate to have two great mentors in my life that can help tell me what I should do, I have been able to get involved in many activities in college that will help me pursue my goals in bio-statistics. Activities such as, participating in multiple researches projects with various professors, taking advanced math courses, and learning two different coding programs which are R and Python while I am currently learning SQL.
In the beginning stages of pursuing my goals, I didn't really make my decision with an eye towards reducing future income risk and instead made them because I thought I would enjoy them. But after the initial stages my mentally really changed and almost all my decision career-wise are based on whether it will be helpful for the future or not such as all the activities I mentioned in the previous paragraph. However, even though I have been somewhat calculated with my decision, I realized that I have enjoyed most of the activities I've done such as working on the research projects, learning to code different statistics models, and talking to various professors because I feel like I have improved my knowledge and experience since the beginning of college. Although, I'm not completely sure what the future holds for me, I believe that I'm moving in at least the correct direction.
During the beginning of my sophomore year, I was totally lost in what I wanted to do in the future and I wasn't really thinking about choosing my major in terms of the money I would earn the future, instead I was looking for a major that I enjoyed. However during the time I was taking an Economics Statistics course and I begun to realized that I actually found the statistics course to be really interesting. After many nights of researching potential majors that included statistics, I discovered the field of bio-statistics and the field felt perfect for me because it was a combination of two fields of interests for me which was biology and statistics with coding.
After finding the field I wanted to pursue I talked to my parents and older brothers about it saying that "I might change to a statistics major", however they recommended that I stay with the Economics major and also get a biology minor instead because the Economics major and biology minor would still work for going to graduate schools in bio-statistics. Both my father and one of my older brothers have PhDs in Statistics and found great statistics jobs so I trust them a lot in this department as they have much more experience with the process than I do. They have been very helpful in telling me what is worth my time and recommending me which courses to take and what activities I might be interested in. They are basically helping me avoid the mistakes that they did during their time in college.
So due to being so fortunate to have two great mentors in my life that can help tell me what I should do, I have been able to get involved in many activities in college that will help me pursue my goals in bio-statistics. Activities such as, participating in multiple researches projects with various professors, taking advanced math courses, and learning two different coding programs which are R and Python while I am currently learning SQL.
In the beginning stages of pursuing my goals, I didn't really make my decision with an eye towards reducing future income risk and instead made them because I thought I would enjoy them. But after the initial stages my mentally really changed and almost all my decision career-wise are based on whether it will be helpful for the future or not such as all the activities I mentioned in the previous paragraph. However, even though I have been somewhat calculated with my decision, I realized that I have enjoyed most of the activities I've done such as working on the research projects, learning to code different statistics models, and talking to various professors because I feel like I have improved my knowledge and experience since the beginning of college. Although, I'm not completely sure what the future holds for me, I believe that I'm moving in at least the correct direction.
For what it's worth, I was pre-med for about two weeks. This ended when I had an accident in organic chem lab that caused minor personal injury. In retrospect, the world is better off that I didn't become a doctor. I can't imagine treat a patient now or doing a physical examination.
ReplyDeleteYour story about finding statistics might show an irony that you should consider. Serendipity seems to matter, especially when you have a great deal of personal uncertainty about finding your career path. If you take that as a real proposition - let serendipity do its work - then having too much planning too early is a mistake. So your initial failure in biology may really have been a blessing in disguise. People with too much intentionality too early on never get to experience that. I'm afraid that the current popularity of statistics will actually encourage blocking out serendipity in learning. You might scratch your head about that for a while.
Now let's look at this as an outside might. How much variation in earning is there by major, particularly across the majors that you are considering? And then how much additional schooling after the bachelors are you planning to do? Some years ago I looked at Doctor salaries (I can't remember where the data where). Faculty salaries in economic compared favorably to primary care doctors (internists) but not to specialists, such as in cardiology, who earn a good deal more. But you may recall that earlier in the semester I showed some data about how salaries of teaching faculty in economics compared with tenure track faculty. The teaching faculty are paid substantially less.
This is more drill down than most undergraduate students have when they consider what field to concentrate on and why. My own sense of your choice to go first and foremost by what appealed to you on other grounds than earnings, is that it comes with an implied belief that you'd do okay now matter what. But do note that comparative literature wasn't one of the areas you mentioned. Had that been your love, your need to earn an income after graduation might have become more apparent earlier in your trajectory through school.
One other point to consider in this is your intellectual/social life outside of your classes and how that's been managed or not. I must say I was shocked earlier in the semester when you reported taking so many credit hours. It sounded like you weren't giving yourself much if any time for outside of classes learning and enjoyment. (Or you weren't allowing yourself to get much sleep.) I think there is some balance here to be found, again perhaps by serendipity. I wonder if you've made any discoveries in this area. Life is much more tolerable if there is some play along with the work.
I'm currently applying to many PhD programs and some Master programs for biostatistics, bioinformatics, computational biology, data science, and etc. Currently, I strongly feel inclined to get a PhD, however many things could happen and I would get a masters degree at the least. After some research, I found the all these majors with a PhD will earn around $115,000 during the start, while senior positions which are obtained with many years of working experience could make upwards of $160,000+.
DeleteAs for my intellectual/social life outside of classes, I do admit that this could be better managed as I've gotten busier over the past year so I have been committing more time to classes as well has other research projects rather than my social life. Additionally the reason why I'm taking a lot of classes is that I need take additional math courses than what the economics major requires and also my research project also counts as a research study course under a professor. However, even though I have a lot to do , I do manage to get enough sleep (6-8 hours) at night so I guess two possibilities are that I have been able to figure out how to more effectively do my work or I have traded off some other activities that I could be done instead of working. And I agree that life is much more tolerable if there is some play with the work as I do think I get enough play now, however maybe just not as much as before.