[ale] Sort of OT: College Majors

[Chris Ricker]

On Mon, 15 Nov 2004, Parker McGee wrote:

> I really don't know what I should do.  Does anyone have any
> recommendations, particularly personal insights?  Anything is
> hugely(!!!) welcome!  Thanks!!

At least you're considering the right school, so you can relax about that 
part! :-)

Seriously, I wouldn't stress about it too much at this point. Changing
majors is easy if you find you want to. Just start out taking a variety of
classes in different areas you're interested in, and see which you're most
interested in spending the rest of your 4+ years learning in depth.  
College is too long to be miserable studying something you don't thoroughly
enjoy! Although Tech's not a liberal arts school, you're still required to
get credits from other areas outside your eventual degree area, so exploring
won't really get you behind in your program as long as you're not totally
random about it. Your advisor will be able to help you pick appropriate
courses that will be generally applicable whatever direction you eventually
want to go. It's easy in your case, since you're primarily interested in
sciences / engineering areas that are fairly closely tied.

Also, it may help to remember that your degrees don't necessarily
pre-determine your eventual career. My undergrad program was the molecular
biology track at Georgia Tech, and my grad program was human evolution at
Utah. My career has been as a Unix / Linux admin....

later,
chris