Anonymous #4 3w

Just curious, why? I’ve thought about changing my major TO teaching

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Anonymous #7 3w

if i’m being completely honest: the pay and community. most, if not all, people know that teacher pay is no where near where it should be. on top of that, community can be, and probably will be, horrible. most kids are not raised right now, and parents are even worse. talking to parents is like talking to a brick wall when it comes to their kids education and behavior. to make matters worse, most administrators will NOT back you up. schools would rather fire/lose a good and caring teacher-

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Anonymous #7 3w

rather than upsetting/making a parent slightly uncomfortable. it is definitely a career path that you MUST have a passion and drive for. also lesson plans are an absolute KILL. COEHD also sucks nuggets. currently most education seniors cannot register till january because they forgot to tell us that we have to get approval from a school for field basing before we can register.

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Anonymous #4 3w

Thanks sm for this input 🙏 what would you wanna change to?

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Anonymous #7 3w

i would personally change to nutrition of some sort, but i know many education majors that have switched to business or marketing!

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Anonymous #10 3w

I was too busy being a child for most of that time???

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Anonymous #10 3w

Yeah I was totally planning it out when I was 5 years old…

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Anonymous #15 3w

Right, like when I was 5 I wanted to be a dinosaur... Not a paleontologist, a dinosaur 💀

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Anonymous #10 3w

I wanted to be a airplane when I was 3 cause yk I barely knew the world and what the world had to offer job wise 🤦🏾‍♂️

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Anonymous #13 3w

Try interdisciplinary work! PhDs are very narrow and that can feel intellectually limiting. Pulling from a lot of different fields is a lot more fun. Idk if you've done your proposal yet, but it's worth considering. I made that pivot between proposal and defense

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Anonymous #17 3w

Bro is a genius

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Anonymous #17 3w

I think my problem is that my project is *too* interdisciplinary so I don't get enough support from my advisor on those aspects (not his fault, I just didn't know what I was getting into when I proposed it). So I have impostor syndrome about self-teaching those subjects and don't see myself ever actually wanting to work in any of them...

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Anonymous #13 3w

That is very very relatable, I have exactly the same experience. I’ve found that reaching out to your committee members helps a lot. Especially if you can bring in people that cover all of those bases. If not, meet other professors, and staff that have relevant experience. For example, there are grad student specific offices that help. My uni has an office of “technology partnership”. That helped with the business side of my software development. My PI the biology. My committee with statistics,

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Anonymous #17 3w

You don’t have to be a top performer in any one of those single fields. Honestly, a lot of the interdisciplinary work that is most in need doesn’t need some kind of brilliant expert, just someone who sees the connections that need to be made. The actual work needed might be relatively simple in the regards of what is needed from each field, less so than the sharply focused stuff we do in our own fields. It’s about someone with the breadth to see how they complement one another

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Anonymous #17 3w

As far as career development goes, I think that l've accepted I will never be the top expert in any of those single fields, but my expertise is in coordinating them. For example, l'm a passable programmer and a passable laboratory scientist. If you need someone to do either of those exclusively, I'm not your guy. But I can bridge the two, knowing enough to understand what the lab needs and what software can offer. That coordination is my marketable skill.

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Anonymous #18 3w

Nah I’m plenty an idiot lol I’m just indecisive 😂

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Anonymous #3 3w

Just depreciate your sadness gng

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Anonymous #13 3w

Literally.. even expecting to have your whole life planned out at 18 is crazy

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Anonymous #32 3w

I did too and i’m still graduating early and I am sooo much happier! There is nothing wrong with changing it early and infact it will help you stay on track if you change it earlier rather than later.

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Anonymous #17 3w

This is encouraging, thanks for the thorough response. I'm also mixed between programming and wet lab work! But the pacing of academia or even industry research all feels like too much for my burned out nervous system and I think I'll be a personal trainer for a bit after I defend in a year 😔 It just makes me worry it would be hard to get back into science after since I'd be out of touch with literature and such

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Anonymous #13 3w

I feel that. I’m plenty burnt out too. Your PhD will never go away, so you don’t lose that. The hardest part Is maintaining a professional network.

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Anonymous #2 3w

Same 😅

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Anonymous #4 3w

The kids are great, teachers don't get paid enough to deal with parents.

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Anonymous #41 2w

Are you kidding?

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Anonymous #41 2w

there are definitely some kids that are absolutely sweethearts, but of course there are going to be a few that (not their fault of course, i blame the parents) just refuse to work with you. i work with middle school and have had my fair share of students who talk back to me, and even threaten me. again, i do not blame the kids, i blame the parents for not disciplining them.

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