Degrees of Separation

It's about the right time of year that people are heading off to college for the first time. They are entering a new environment and are getting ready for a new chapter in their life. It has me thinking a lot about the trainwreck that was my college career. I hope that I can help some people who are going into this right now by learning from my mistakes. 

For those of you not familiar, I will give some background on this. I started my college career at Penn State as a chemical engineer. I wanted to be a chemical engineer because when I was younger I was told they made a lot of money so I decided that was what I wanted to do. Well, that was a huge mistake. 

I’m sure some people could make that work, but by my second year I realized I hated it. It just seemed too boring to me and I lost any ability to focus on the material or make any effort to learn it. I was always good at math in high school, and I learned that actuaries made a boatload of money, so I decided I would switch to actuarial science. The same thing happened, I liked math but actuarial science is just so dry and the thought of doing that for a living was soul-sucking. 

At this point, I was at a weird place in life. I had gotten two years into college and had no idea what I wanted to do with my life. I was interested in some of the things I was learning, but the main bulk of the material just wasn’t interesting to me. The thought of doing any of those things as a career was even more of a deterrent. I was stuck though, I had put all this work in and I had to get something out of it. 

I switched to material science because that was something that I had been interested in pursuing in high school. I honestly can’t remember why I switched out of this major but I ended up in forensic science. During one of my classes I learned about an opportunity to go to Ocean City Maryland to work as a seasonal police officer. 

The political climate was different then and I needed a summer job and that seemed like it would be applicable work experience for when I became a forensic scientist so I decided to apply. I somehow managed to make it into the program; so, that summer I was a police officer in Ocean City. I loved the job, I felt like I was actually doing something to help people. Looking back, I can see there is a lot that is not good and that is ultimately why I decided to not go into law enforcement. One person can’t change a broken system and being a part of a broken system makes you part of the problem. But we will save criminal justice reform for another day. 

I thought for sure I knew what I wanted to do now. I would finish my forensic science degree and work in a forensic science lab. One day, I was talking to one of my TAs and she mentioned that the only jobs you can get as a forensic scientist pay about $35,000 a year. I looked at her and said “So, you're telling me if I drop out right now and just go become a police officer I can make significantly more money without having to finish my degree?” She said that was pretty much the case, and after I left class that day I immediately went to the admissions office and dropped out of school. 

It was honestly an incredibly freeing experience. I had never been more depressed than when I was in college and I finally thought I knew what I was going to do with my life. My parents weren’t particularly happy but I didn’t particularly care. Though my then fiancee, now wife encouraged me to take time for myself and that I could continue my education later, I ultimately decided to enroll at Kutztown University for a criminal justice degree at my parents' encouragement.

It is a technicality, but when I transferred I transferred as a psych major. That ends up bringing the final tally to seven different majors over the course of my college career. They eventually fixed my major and I was working towards my criminal justice degree. I was actually getting close to finishing it when I met with my advisor. He looked at my transcripts and was totally confused as to why I was majoring in criminal justice. Despite the fact that he was a criminal justice professor, he told me essentially that I was too smart for criminal justice and told me to seriously consider finishing a math degree there. It wouldn't take me any extra time and would set me up better for my future. 

I ended up taking his advice and it was a very good thing I did. Shortly after that, things changed a lot in the US and I realized that law enforcement definitely wasn’t for me anymore. I managed to somehow finish my math degree and immediately got a job in a completely unrelated field. I now work as a civil engineer.

I went into college without any real sense of what I wanted to do. I really hadn’t considered the why of my major either. I think that is a question that could help a lot of new college students. When you are deciding on your degree ask yourself why. If it's just for the money I would seriously consider taking some time to think about it. Some people can still power through and go on to work a job they hate just for the money. I thought I was one of those people but unfortunately I wasn’t. 

I also don’t buy into the narrative that you should find a job you love and you’ll never work a day. I definitely think that is a case of toxic positivity. There isn’t a job for everyone, sometimes you will just have to settle and hope it isn’t something you absolutely hate. Unfortunately, until automation gets better, most people have to have some sort of job to survive. 

If I could go back in time to give past me any advice it would be to just slow down. I would tell myself not to rush into college and try to get a game plan and just take a year to figure out what I wanted to actually do. Who knows, maybe I would have found something that I actually could enjoy doing.