Choosing a career/university course

My kid just registered for first year engineering and I am very pleased with his choice. The program is challenging and practical. Once he graduates, he can enter into an excellent profession with lots of opportunities.

I am not sure how it works in the UK, whether you can go directly into dentistry. In Canada, student take undergrad courses, usually science and apply to dentistry or medicine after 3 years. Not everybody gets in.

In my experience a BSc in Chemistry is not enough by itself to get you an excellent job in that field. You will need to go on to a Masters or Doctorate or take a specialized chemical program in a technical college to work in the discipline, or use it as a jumping point to something else eg medicine, dentistry, law, business. All of which require more school, time and money. Do it if you love the subject, but I would suggest the chem engineering route.

Well Mehta23 I am I was in the same boat as you so don't worry you are seriously not alone ek se!

damewolf13 said:

MY only advice to anyone in picking a future career is try to find something you absolutely will love. Money is really nice to have, but in the end, if you don't really love the career you have chosen, you will not ultimately be happy there.

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I cannot stress on this enough.

+ 1 damewolf111113333!

Remember this Mehta23 as a really really clever but dead guy once said:



No matter what it is... how "great" or how "small"... when you have given your best... your entire body and mind and you give yourself to it 500% and don't stress ... money will come through the door.

It will.

Remember:

Happiness = Success

Ja sure I agree there are some things that just simply will just not work!

Like completely obsolete and ancient "Medieval Plumbing"!

Then you will turn into a hobo joe and you will be no more!

So ja within in good reason choose something that will at least support you some what!

Don't choose something that will not support you at all like Medieval Plumbing!

Remember you should ask yourself an important question here about what you said early and why you brought it up:

Why is money very important to you?

Please note I think that is a great thing because sadly in most cases Money = Power.

Sadly.

Anyway!

If you are very interested in money and like fast cars or whatever it is that is attracting you to lots of money and so on... then you might want to consider something in the business section or a more general type of thing like something "Business Science".

Or maybe try to choose something you find you will really enjoy so later you can open your own business in the chosen field.

Take me for a "flawless" example! ...

I have been studying IT for a while now and after the gazillionth 1 bazillionth 10000000th line of

[HIGH]
//Crappy program does something very crappy and don't care what it does... oh yeah!

# include <iostream>

using namespace std;

int main ()

blah blah blah blah[/HIGH]And even worse after the bazillionth <p> tag:

[HIGH]<p>.... blah blah blah blah yakkitty yakitty bleh bleh shnoo shnoo! </p>[/HIGH]It starts to take it's toll l for me at least I know it does...

It is not working out for me!

Going crazy!

I am really starting to consider something else because I am starting to seriously lose interest in this spot in life.

It is just not for me.

But remember this is only me!

You might like programming... you never know!

I did find something by accident that I realised that I seriously seriously enjoy!

Teaching!

An emergency popped up at the school with a dodgy crazy loser maths teacher that was insulting the children (using the K word... what a crazy freak!) and because I was doing such an awesome job at After Care they asked if I could fill in for the next month to help out!

I really really really loved that month... and I am seriously considering RUNNING away from computers!

:-D


SUBSCRIBE SUBSCRIBE SUBSCRIBE!

(And I guess when they looked at my Matric results and saw 96% for Maths that helped like crazy too! )

We (students and I) had such a good time and I kept it really interesting with all my crazy facts about random topics.

I seriously mind trolled them though!

They really did not like Tuesadays... "The Legendary Question of Extreme Ugliness! "

And if you ask for a clue... you all have to drop down and give me 30 push ups!

And only then do you guys get the clue!

;-D

That was every Tuesday to get the week started off from all their hang overs from Monday morning and their crazy parties from escaping the crazyness of life!

(I went a bit easy on them on Mondays because they were "hung over" from having out of control fun on the weekends like crazies! )

I used to ask them really nasty questions on Tuesdays and Troll their young undersized brains! ... they hated Tuesdays but I really sure as hell didn't!

I LOVED Tuesdays!

Oh yeah!

Meheheheheheee!

>

Evil Stinky is very very Evil!

Even the Grade 11 and Matrics came up and wanted me to take their class as well because the word spread so fast!

I couldn't believe it!

I sometimes still can't!

I have been told I would make a brilliant teacher and never even thought about that advice.

The word must have spread about it all to everyone.

But sadly they needed to realise in the end I am not "qualified" and they had to accept that it was only for a very short time as no one else could do it at that time and it was an emergency.

Did it for free too because I had so much fun!

Now I am 500% aware that teachers get paid - 5 Rands.

But that is so not what I am doing it for!

And Mehta23 remember like ocnbrze said take your time!

But don't turn into this while you do!

Well maybe you can take half a year (or what ever time you think might help you) to maybe do some occupation / work shadowing?

Hmmm... trying to think of something creative.. out of the box to help you out...

It sounds like there are some major areas that you're interested:

1) Chemistry stuffs.

(CAN I get lots and LOTS of GUN POWDER from you oh ptetty pretty please???? )

We must negotiate!!

(But be warned... I am serious cheap ass!)

2) Computing / IT area.

(I know I said there is a lot of repetitive stuff in computing but bear in mind there is also a very interesting and very creative problem solving and seriously interesting work a rounds to some problems that world has in many areas. Take reverse software engineering for example, very interesting topic.)

Also sounds like you have done some Java Script you say?

3) It does look like money is a bit important to you.

Well... maybe there is some way you can combine chemistry and computing together?

Why not?

Maybe you can ask around to see if there is something that will do all 3 available to take out 2 birds with 1 stone?

What about trying to take out alll 3 in one go?

;-)

If you find an area that is a good "middle ground" that can do a bit of both thing-a-magiggies that you seem interested in then you will be able to get a taste of both.

And if you are qualified in both areas it makes you all the more attractive for employment.

It is a nice middle ground and maybe from there you can really decide if it is for you or not?

Had a quick search fer ya on the world's brain (Google ) for maybe a quick looky!:

Computational chemistry - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Hmmm... so you like computers?

And Chemistry?

hmmm...

I really don't know what area you can take for that?

Hmmm... hopefully some one here would be kind to help out?

Hopeful Stinky is being hopeful!

Hmmm can I ask why you like computing?

So you have tried out JavaScript and you said you really like it?

But can't do it for a living?

Well I aintz gotz no freaking clue what so eva programming languages they use there!

Have no clue!

I don't even know if they will be "OOP" / "object orientated programming"?

Stinky Troll is searching brb!

Wow I was wrong about it being OOP though!

I see what these Chemist guys seem to be using now!

Shit!

Why the heck is it Markup???

Why the hell did they use freaking Markup based stuff??

What the...

Hmm.. I just don't get that or understand why they took that route..

Anyway!

Never mind my madness!

Here is some info for you young grasshopper!

http://pubs.acs.org/subscribe/archive/tcaw/11/i10/pdf/1002comps.pdf

Chemical Markup Language - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Looks very very very interesting actually!

Very cool by the looks of it hey!

Good luck!

And may the force be with you!

What!? Nooooooooooooooo! Nothing else than chemistry, says a chemist himself My major was chemistry at the university. There are many areas in chemistry which need also it/coding skills. For example a physical chemistry, computer aided drug design, nmr modelling, proteine modelling etc.. but sure, hard decision!

a chem degree might be better than a chem engineering?

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I dont know how it is in your country, but here the difference is huge. Chem engineerings are studying things in practice to solve some industrial problems and how to make processes work for example consuming less money. They dont much care about the theory behind. They know for example that some reaction is sn2 type nuchleophilic substitution and they know the solvent effects etc, but most of the things are facts for engineers.

When i studied at the university, we studied more and more the theory (actually about 40% of all courses we had lab works though!) and the reason why the reaction was for example sn2 not the sn1 type or something else.. After basic courses we studied a quantum chemistry etc. and finally specialized in some smaller area. I specialized in organic chemistry. When i studied a math, it was more like proving things. For engineers those are facts, they dont need to prove that for example lim(x->inf.) 1/x = 0 but at the university it wasnt fact for us. We needed to prove it. Mostly the questions on exams were "Prove that...." not "Calculate the..."

It depends alot of the work.. For example if your work is to monitoring, handle and solve problems in processes, then a chem eng degree is right one. But if you need to understand the theory behind and study more about it, then a chem degree is better. Both are needed and both have the knowledge to share to make things happen. There might be also differend kind of chem eng degrees, lower and upper degree. I dont know, you should check that too. (atleast we have here where i live). Some of the upper degree might be (almost) the same level as chem degree, but they study more practice than just the theory. But still, if youre going to study at an university to get a chem degree, upper level, it would be more studying theories. Most of the researchers are graduated from an university.

And for the last question. If they are looking for a chem eng, they propably dont hire a chemist. It's not that the chemist wouldnt know what to do, but they dont need a guy, who has a higher degree for a job than it is needed. Also they dont want to pay more salary either... You should check some job advertisements to see what kind of degree is needed and what companies are looking for...

Not everyone gets to choose the job they love, and not everyone gets to earn a lot doing what they love. It's a cynical view point, but coming from someone who lives in a developing country, lots of people here take jobs (that pay well, so that necessitates taking a degree towards said well-paying job) that they don't necessarily love to earn money to support themselves and their family. I think what's important is that you find something (even a little thing) to like about whatever you're doing.

Mehta23 said:

I've been told JS is a bit of a rubbish language in the real world

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Oh really? I know some developers who would disagree.

To help strength my claim, here's an experiment:
1. Download and install Firefox
2. Install the NoScript add-on (find it in the add-on directory in Firefox)
3. Make sure it is set to "Forbid Scripts Globally". Usually this is on by default.
4. Surf around and see how many sites where their content doesn't work right, doesn't display right, etc.

That's the real world.

I will say that JavaScript is misused and miscoded (i.e. poorly written) sometimes, thereby giving the impression of rubbish.