OT What Did You Go To College For?!

[Tribeboy89]

I WENT (so weird to say that now) to Alabama for a major in graphic design and a minor in advertising.

 

[NJ Coach]

Choose a job you love, and you'll never work a day in your life.

 

[cscheerio]

Eyes On The Prize Thank you so much!! This is a huge help!!! I already know Dreamweaver & HTML so now I feel pretty good about that Personally, I hate Dreamweaver, I'd rather just mess around with the codes!

dreamweaver makes such a mess of the code....I am not a fan.

 

[xo sarah]

I'm a couple classes away from my AAS in Digital Design & Graphics after four years at community college. Although it only has taken me two years in my degree, I was one of those that really couldn't decide what I wanted to go to college for; tried out nursing, dental hygiene, veterinary technology, but just none of them were the right fit for me and I didn't enjoy any of them. I just didn't really enjoy having to fit in that type of box deal, I prefer to be more creative (must be the lefty in me coming out with my right side creative brain).

Now I'm planning on moving to Texas and transferring to UTSA in January for a Bachelor of Arts Degree in Communication with a concentration on Technical Communication.

 

[SharkDad]

Everyone please remember there is no perfect career path. For many of the most successful people it took many tries to get it just right.

The consistent thing with all of them is that they never gave up.

 

[saammmiiii]

I'm getting my bachelors in nursing and then transferring to an anesthesia school to become a certified registered nurse anesthetist.

how many years of school does this take?

 

[SandeRae]

As my mother always told me "There is more than one way to skin a cat". Its an odd saying but what it means is that there is always more than one way to achieve something you want. For example, for the past couple years I have known I wanted to be a nurse. There was never a second thought in my mind. But having just completed my first year of college things have certainly changed! I took a mandatory Nutrition course and LOVED IT! And even better, I was actually really good at it too. So now going into my second year of college, switching majors has been on my mind. The "more than one way to skin a cat part" comes in because I still want to be a nurse. So long story short I did a ton of research and found out that if I get a 4 year degree in Nutrition, Johns Hopkins University then offers a 13 month accelerated program for earning my Nursing (RN) degree after college. So then in a matter of 5 years I would have 2 degrees. My advice to everyone here is look into all the options. Just because all your friends are taking the traditional route doesn't mean you have to also. There is usually more than one way to achieve what you want!

 

[JessicaL]

Two suggestions are to take that extra time and find an internship, that way you can 1. find practical experience in the field you are interested in and 2. possibly make networking connections for when you are searching for your first job.

the second suggestion is to the extra time for business related classes that you are interested in. Investing, entrepreneurship, starting and running business are all subjects that could help in the future whether you want to start your own business or be an asset to someone else who does.

The internship suggestion is a phenomenal one! Be sure that if you are seeing out an internship, or even job shadowing, experience in a field, that you consider an unpaid internship. Many organizations will cater an unpaid internship right to your needs/learning desires and allow you to complete fewer hours if they know you're solely doing this for your own learning experience, versus being required for course hours.

I have three interns that will be "working" for my department this summer that are performing non-credit internships. The hours required of them are much lower than those that are performing internships for course credit and these folks are able to truly tell me what they want to learn (or discover) versus what a professor/syllabus has outlined for them.

If you can't complete an internship, job shadowing is a great way to see if a field is or isn't for you. You can contact and shadow a professional for any amount of hours the two of you determine. THis can really help you see the guts and glory of a profession before you spend 4+ years learning about it in school and enter the "real work" to find out its not what you thought it was.

 

[KRECCheer]

Everyone please remember there is no perfect career path. For many of the most successful people it took many tries to get it just right.

The consistent thing with all of them is that they never gave up.

Graduated with a degree in History. Thought I wanted to teach. Now a grants analyst about to head into the Ophthalmology field and apply to med schools. When I look back on my "dreams" growing up, they all involved the medical field and medical school. Time to make that happen.

 

[SharkDad]

Graduated with a degree in History. Thought I wanted to teach. Now a grants analyst about to head into the Ophthalmology field and apply to med schools. When I look back on my "dreams" growing up, they all involved the medical field and medical school. Time to make that happen.

Good luck to you. So long as you don't give up I am confident it will

 

[mollymags]

i started college at a small private school ($$$$$) and planned on being an elementary education major with minors in spanish and reading. after my first year i wasn't sure what i wanted to do anymore, so i moved home and transferred to a community college so i could take a variety of classes to find something that suited me. i didn't want to spend upwards of 30k a year to take random classes. i was a culinary arts major for a semester and then spent another semester taking business and social science classes. during that time i started working for an EP so i decided to take some hospitality and special event planning classes to see if this field would be a good long term fit for me and i ended up loving it! my actual major is meeting and special events planning, although I'll probably also take the extra classes to get a degree in hospitality management as well. the degrees are only associates degrees and i hope to eventually get a BA in one of those fields, but at this time its not very realistic for me, time and money wise.

i love my current job because it allows me to stay involved in the cheer industry and has opened a lot of doors for me (judging, coaching, etc). but if i change my mind or something happens down the line, a degree in hospitality management is pretty versatile. it's an industry that requires a lot of nights and weekends and you have to love working with/for people, but i really do! i always work to give the best customer service i can and i love knowing i play a part in creating fun, positive experiences and memories for people.

 

[Ashley]

I was a Computer Science major in college, with a math minor. I work now as an web applications developer for a finance company. Computer Science really is a science based heavily on theory and math - if all you want to do is know how to program a little bit to make some relatively basic websites that put data into or take it out of a database - you don't need it. But it does become useful if you want to work on more complicated software applications and most employers will require a CS degree or something similar (software engineering, electrical engineering, etc). Also worth pointing out that technically, computer science isn't programming, and software engineering is actually a better major if you don't want the heavy math/theory part of it and you want to focus on the practical side of it instead. BUT software engineering is still relatively knew, and many employers don't respect is as much as CS, even though you're probably not going to use that heavy background in theory for a lot of basic software development jobs.

I focused on computer science and didn't do any graphic design courses, even though I knew I wanted to develop for the web, because there are usually designers to focus on the design part of it. I'm very proficient in HTML/CSS/Javascript, but I'm not good at making fancy graphics.

I can't stress enough the importance of internships either. I graduated a few years ago when the economy was at its crappiest, and probably the only reason I had a job coming out of college was because I had an internship for two years in school and they offered me a job post graduation. Even if they don't offer you a job, it's still a huge help to have relevant work experience on your resume when you're job hunting.

 

[Ashley]

dreamweaver makes such a mess of the code....I am not a fan.

For basic websites, I like dreamweaver to quickly edit content - like text. But yeah, using it to make your website for you is a terrible idea. I just write all of my HTML by hand.

 

[Ashley]

I have been:
a programmer analyst - simply didnt like where i was working
Network Admin for a small company - i got laid off during the recession in the states
Software Distribution for a larger company - I really enjoyed this however it was a temp job while someone was on mat leave
Network Admin - mostly helpdesk type work helping users

I saw IT and thought the same as you (Information Technology), but I think AcaseA used IT as an abbreviation for Industrial Technology (I don't really know what that is ha)

 

[cscheerio]

For basic websites, I like dreamweaver to quickly edit content - like text. But yeah, using it to make your website for you is a terrible idea. I just write all of my HTML by hand.

I typically use a good text editor with syntax colouring and firebug to test changes.