yup, felt like it
i'm sick of it... i'm tired of always having to answer the questions in the same way
"what's your major?"
mathematics
"oh really?! what do you plan on doing with that?"
i dont really know...
and then follows the random long list of what other people have said i could do with such a major...
i could teach, do finance, do business, cryptology, etc etc etc
its a very broad field, but i want to know what i want to do with myself once i'm out of college, i'm sick of just saying that i dont know... because sooner or later, i'm going to be out of college and not know what the hell i'm going to do for a job...
i dont want to sell myself short knowing that i could be doing something better, knowing that i could be more successful...
i've been feeling this way ever since i was talking to a customer at work tonight... he had been in the restaurant for a good hour and a half just studying for a finance exam he had coming up in his post grad-school classes... we had the same old conversation... whats your major? what are you doing here then? what do you plan to do with that...? and once again i couldn't answer the question being certain regarding what i wanted to do with my life...
i hate that... i hate not being able to answer questions that pertain to myself, that i SHOULD know
i know i'm still pretty young, but all my life i've know what i want to do and what i should to do get ahead
come to find out that this guy's wife was a math major and she ended up teaching high school level mathematics (something i really dont want to do, but could do if it came down to it)... so then i'm thinking, great... my mathematics major is just going to lead to a dead end that i dont want to be stuck in... thats something that i can't and won't accept
the man works for an insurance company which he said is owned by a person who was a math major, and that the main upper-level management employees are also math majors, so what career path did they choose? they are actuaries... something i'd never looked into before, mainly because i'd been focused on a whole lot of nothing in my math major
so what do actuaries do?
they analyze possible risks for companies and create models for dealing with the risks (and/or working with them)... they can work for any company in which any risks are involved including insurance, law firms, government, business, advertising, etc etc etc... so its still a very broad field, but its a very fine-tuned job... one in which high levels of math skills are needed, and the ability to explain it to others in a comprehensive way...
so here's the conclusion to all of my rambling...
i'm adding an actuarial science minor to my math major, and forgetting about/getting rid of the mass communications minor which would have gotten me nowhere
many of the courses for the new minor are already part of the math major, and i've already completed almost a fourth of them... and i'm going to have to take another 2/3 of them just for the math major anyways... the remaining bit is business/finance courses that i will probably find some interest in as well...
i'm also going to start looking into the actuarial exams that are required (kinda like a BAR exam for lawyers and MCATS for doctors) after taking just one of these exams, i'd be qualified to start working as an actuary for various companies already... and the more exams you take, the higher your salary will be (starting salary with just one exam is an average $44,000 to $50,000 a year)... there are 9 exams total i believe and my goal is to have at least half of them completed by the time i'm out of college... by then, i'll have a firm footing to get practically any career of my choice with the potential of making more than $100,000 before i'm even 30 years old, but its not all about money to me... after some research of the field and the skills required for it... i dont see why i shouldn't try for it...
i finally know what i think i want to do... and that, to me, is better than having no clue at all
if i end up not liking that path i've chosen, then oh well... i'm back where i started, but at least i tried doing something that i actually found interest in for once
i'm done rambling for the night...
have a good one!
"what's your major?"
mathematics
"oh really?! what do you plan on doing with that?"
i dont really know...
and then follows the random long list of what other people have said i could do with such a major...
i could teach, do finance, do business, cryptology, etc etc etc
its a very broad field, but i want to know what i want to do with myself once i'm out of college, i'm sick of just saying that i dont know... because sooner or later, i'm going to be out of college and not know what the hell i'm going to do for a job...
i dont want to sell myself short knowing that i could be doing something better, knowing that i could be more successful...
i've been feeling this way ever since i was talking to a customer at work tonight... he had been in the restaurant for a good hour and a half just studying for a finance exam he had coming up in his post grad-school classes... we had the same old conversation... whats your major? what are you doing here then? what do you plan to do with that...? and once again i couldn't answer the question being certain regarding what i wanted to do with my life...
i hate that... i hate not being able to answer questions that pertain to myself, that i SHOULD know
i know i'm still pretty young, but all my life i've know what i want to do and what i should to do get ahead
come to find out that this guy's wife was a math major and she ended up teaching high school level mathematics (something i really dont want to do, but could do if it came down to it)... so then i'm thinking, great... my mathematics major is just going to lead to a dead end that i dont want to be stuck in... thats something that i can't and won't accept
the man works for an insurance company which he said is owned by a person who was a math major, and that the main upper-level management employees are also math majors, so what career path did they choose? they are actuaries... something i'd never looked into before, mainly because i'd been focused on a whole lot of nothing in my math major
so what do actuaries do?
they analyze possible risks for companies and create models for dealing with the risks (and/or working with them)... they can work for any company in which any risks are involved including insurance, law firms, government, business, advertising, etc etc etc... so its still a very broad field, but its a very fine-tuned job... one in which high levels of math skills are needed, and the ability to explain it to others in a comprehensive way...
so here's the conclusion to all of my rambling...
i'm adding an actuarial science minor to my math major, and forgetting about/getting rid of the mass communications minor which would have gotten me nowhere
many of the courses for the new minor are already part of the math major, and i've already completed almost a fourth of them... and i'm going to have to take another 2/3 of them just for the math major anyways... the remaining bit is business/finance courses that i will probably find some interest in as well...
i'm also going to start looking into the actuarial exams that are required (kinda like a BAR exam for lawyers and MCATS for doctors) after taking just one of these exams, i'd be qualified to start working as an actuary for various companies already... and the more exams you take, the higher your salary will be (starting salary with just one exam is an average $44,000 to $50,000 a year)... there are 9 exams total i believe and my goal is to have at least half of them completed by the time i'm out of college... by then, i'll have a firm footing to get practically any career of my choice with the potential of making more than $100,000 before i'm even 30 years old, but its not all about money to me... after some research of the field and the skills required for it... i dont see why i shouldn't try for it...
i finally know what i think i want to do... and that, to me, is better than having no clue at all
if i end up not liking that path i've chosen, then oh well... i'm back where i started, but at least i tried doing something that i actually found interest in for once
i'm done rambling for the night...
have a good one!