January 5, 2004
A: FROM MENTOR DENISE HARBERT IN IL
Hi Pui! Your question is very similar to the one Sung asked, so read all
of her answers too!

No major comes with a 100% guarantee of a decent job, but that's OK! In
general, there are no guarantees in life about anything. What is important
is trying to do something that you love and earn enough money to be
comfortable. Here is an important statistic that I learned while in
college: For people who live above the poverty level, there is absolutely
no relationship between money and happiness. If you can't afford the
basics of food, shelter, clothing, health care, then, yes, money does
affect your ability to be happy. But once basic needs are satisfied, money
and happiness have no relationship. It is true that money doesn't buy
happiness. There are a lot of rich people who are absolutely miserable, a
lot of lower income people who are very happy, and vice versa. Teachers
and university professors, for example, tend to make very little money
considering how much education they need in order to get those jobs. Some
of those people feel that they were cheated out of their "just due" in
life, while others feel lucky to have found something that impacts the next
generation and gives them personal satisfaction. Many teachers teach
because they can't imagine doing anything else in life, not because they
want to be rich. Some teachers teach because they had personal reasons for
not being able to do something different. (I'm sure that, as a student,
you have noticed these differences in your teachers.) A person's reason
for being in any career means everything. People who tend to pursue money
for the sake of money usually end up miserable. That's because no matter
how rich they get, they never have enough money to make them happy.

What kind of person are you? You said you want a "well-paid job" that also
fulfills your dreams. You didn't say you wanted to be rich. That leads me
to believe that you want the same kinds of things that I wanted when I was
your age - happiness and job satisfaction, combined with enough money to
pay bills, take nice vacations, and have a few luxury items. I didn't need
to be rich to be happy, but I knew I couldn't be happy while struggling to
live on an average woman's salary.

You are lucky that your current "loves" are math, physics, and
chemistry. These are skills that not everyone can do, so our society tends
to pay more money to people who can do them! You should have absolutely no
problem finding a job that has good benefits and pays a decent salary. The
beauty of those three fields is that you can do just about anything with
them. If you finish any of these majors, you will not strictly be limited
to careers as a mathematician, physicist, or chemist. Although it seems
surprising, these majors involve more than just one subject. They involve
learning about a specific and methodical way of thinking and problem
solving. That problem-solving skill can be applied to just about any
field. I have a friend who started in chemistry, switched to biochemistry
in graduate school, studied DNA, and is now working towards a career as a
CSI. I had another friend who started in physics, focused on particle
physics in graduate school, and ended up analyzing prescription sales data
for pharmaceutical companies. Another friend got his doctorate in biology,
worked as a pharmaceutical salesperson, got a business degree, and is now a
corporate executive. Another friend started in computer science, analyzed
sales data for pharmaceutical companies, switched to analyzing banking and
financial investment data, and is now contemplating another change, perhaps
more towards business. Still another friend started in geography, switched
to operations research and Excel/VBA programming, got a business degree,
and is now working on the New York Stock Exchange. I started in math,
switched to statistics in graduate school, analyzed sales data for
pharmaceutical companies, learned how to write computer code in a language
called SAS, switched to academic research in women's studies, and am now
writing SAS computer code to analyze disease incidence and medical
treatment procedure data for hospitals. None of these people were limited
by their very specific SET college majors.

SET people learn skills that are widely applicable to many different kinds
of jobs. SET people learn how to create and use mathematical models in
specific settings, then many corporations hire them and train them to apply
those skills to business settings. It is a lot easier to train a physicist
to compute a business model than it is to train a non-SET person with
business instincts to do mathematical modeling!

If you consider double majoring in two of your favorite fields, then you
should have even more job opportunities than you would have with just
one! Make sure you learn how to use a computer, especially software like
Microsoft Word, PowerPoint, Excel, and maybe Access. Hang in there, and
never limit your dreams simply because you're afraid they won't make you rich!