Changing majors Options

[Melissa]

This is kind of hard for me. All my life, I've been told that I was going to be a doctor. Yeah, I enjoyed anatomy class in high school, I really liked interning for an ENT, I would live an excellent life as a doctor, it sounded like a good plan so I went with it.

The thing is, I'm not really interested in it. I hate chemistry, biology, AND physics. I'm trying to be a Neuroscience and Behavior major because I thought I would be interested in psychology and because its requirements overlap with the premed requirements. And yeah, I do like psych, except it isn't enough to make me actually want to go to class. I have no motivation for it whatsoever.

I was thinking about this through the span of the year and feel that I really ... don't want to be a doctor. I'm more interested in writing and studying human rights, sociology, maybe even political science. The problem is that ALL of my classes I took this entire year go toward the premed/psych path and I'm not sure if it would be wise to switch at this point.

I'm going to email my dean about this and see if it would work out, but then there's the parents to worry about. My mom is crazy and I highly doubt she'll pay my tuition if I decide not to be premed. The one time I brought it up, she bitched at me, saying that if I wanted to "waste my life," I should've just gone to Baylor (I got a full ride there, but seriously... BAYLOR??) instead of choosing Columbia, which is expensive as f**k.

I just know that if I look ten years into my life, I see myself as a journalist, an author, something that has to do with writing and debating. Maybe even a lawyer. I DON'T see me working in an operating room and being on-call nearly 24/7. It's just not me.

I don't know. This is sort of a rant... and me wanting encouragement. I'm not sure how I'll work through this.

[*paperplane*]

I can't imagine it would be very appealing to most people, but I'm rather fond of punctuation. As it is, though, I'm having a hard time seeing myself dedicating my life to anything in particular.

Oh, I agree. I didn't mean to suggest that intelligence would determine which field someone would pursue. It should be by interest, but whereas some people would suitable to follow any path they so desire, I feel that I'm fairly limited because I cannot make myself do something I'm not interest in, even if it were for the greater good. I like to study social issues, and think about how to theoretically solve them, but actually contributing through something like biology seems like unrealistic for me.

It's all just sort of depressing. I thought that going to college and taking more classes that I'm interested in taking would help me figure out what direction I want to take my life, but everything is still so requirement oriented that I feel absolutely no closer to having any idea what I might possible want to do with my life.