Thoughts on 'Liberal Arts' Degree - Page 6

any thoughts on environmental science major?

It's pretty much STEM so it's in good shape. Plus with the rise of climate change and environmental pressures caused by a vastly growing population it's only sure to become more in demand, occupations related to it are growing.

Thank you! I wasn't sure about environmental science major, b/c my mom keeps saying that this major is bs and she wants me to become a nurse... But with your word, I think I'm going to stick with my own decision.

someday you will thank your mom.

especially when you're graduating college.

I strongly recommend you check this website out (official government statistics on environmental sciences jobs outlook):

http://www.bls.gov/ooh/Life-Physical...pecialists.htm

Looks good to me.

I know, and I'm very thankful now, she's been there for me always, I love her. It's just that sometimes I need her support for the decisions I've made, I don't want her to make all the decisions for me. I really cannot do the nurse thing, I'm afraid of blood!!! And I won't let her down, since my current school do not have the nurse program, I will do a double major in chemistry along with environmetanl science, hopefully the chemistry major will get me into the pharmacy program which is another thing my mom wants me to do.

I've showing all the datas to my mom too, but when it comes to find a job realistically, Environmental science jobs are pretty hard to find plus I do not have a SSN. I tried to find an intership for summer, but failed

My mother told me you can't do anything with physics. What the hell do they know?

Why don't you just major in one of the sciences (chemistry, biology, physics, etc) and then specialize in environmental science in graduate school? I think you can do that.

Oh where to begin! I should mention that I started in that field right in the middle of the dot com and Y2K bubble so everybody and their Indian cousin was trying to get in the field because they all had a friend who had a friend who landed a $80k job right out of college with no experience so the classes were a bit crowded and the professors' main goal seemed to be to weed out students rather than to really teach.

The programming part while challenging is actually not terribly hard - I mean sure you'll have some sleepless nights trying to figure out why your program that's due in the morning is crashing, but the hardest part is really the conceptual things and the math. In most universities you'll become a math minor or a double major.

I don't know how they do things now but we were started off with C, a powerful and low level language where it wasn't very forgiving. Not too bad, but you'll have to become a wizard at tracing code snippets for tests.

Data Structures using C was harder, but also very interesting. Those concepts should stay with you for ever. Trees, linked lists, etc.

Then for your second year, things get a bit harder - Assembly language is even lower level than C. This completely depends on your professor. We did intel 8086 assembly, but others like to do MIPS or an easier langauge. You'd have to be an expert on bit manipulation and thinking like the CPU thinks. Nothing is taken for granted.

Then you have the class that kicked my butt- Digital Logic Design which is basically an ee course and you're working on boolean algebra and dealing with bits and how things look on the circuit level. It IS an interesting class but my professor was a bit of an asshole and very old.

Then classes get harder but more fun too...usually there is an Operating Systems class, Database Design and programming (SQL, etc), and compilers where you get to make your own compiler! There are a few electives to take too like a C++, JAVA, C# or other Object oriented class, Software engineering, Game Design, web programming and junk.

It's definitely a hard hard field and you have to be ready for battle, find all the old tests you can find, and make friends with classmates.

Also, don't expect to meet girls. It's quite sad really.