With any degree there are people skills required, whether its dealing with coworkers or actual customers. College is about learning the skills required to deal with all kinds of people in different situations.
I've noticed that the classes you really dread are the ones that make or break the college experience. If you bust ass and try your best you will excel, but if you do like what I did most times and let it slide then you won't be doing yourself any favors. The tough classes are there to teach you many things about yourself. I now look back and do appreciate the times I did sit down and learn the material because those are the topics I know really well.
College isn't really about getting an engineering/pharmacy/physics degree so much as a certificate that you can sit down and learn certain topics when asked to do so. The degree will just get you in the door, but its up to you to secure the job when your in the job interview. Basically what you will need is the ability to practice what you've been taught.

Uh, no joke. A couple months back, I interviewed a gold surveyor who works for a Canadian firm (they're all Canadian, btw). He makes big $$$$ and would love to recruit young-ens of any age into his profession; because his breed is dying out, and there's still gold to be found.

He's helped dig up about 250 million ounces of gold. Translate that into gold-per-ounce market prices, and you can see why he said of his profession, "You'll do better than 'all right.'" SmileWavy

Sounds like you're perfect for med school. No worries, 50% of doctors finish at the bottom of their med school class...you know what they call them....Doctor!

Think about it, you may be already done with your chemistry.

Managerial Economics :). More equations than normal Economics! Plus, as a bonus, it comes with a heaping side of theory. Then you can be just as cool as me some day (I just graduated on 9/10/09) :D.

My son just started his junior year of pre-pharmacy. He has three chem labs/week so he has to swim at 5:30am instead of in the afternoon with the team. He says this is his toughest semester so far.
He's not planning on standing behind a Walgreen's counter (though he's gotten a few hours in as a pharmacy tech at out local hospital), is thinking more on the research side. He still has a long way to go but his college career has already surpassed that of his parents.
Jim

What chemistry class is it that is giving you trouble? General, organic, p-chem?????

If you don't like dealing with people, the Psyche would seem like a poor choice.

If you're firm on staying at that particular university, then a good way to pick a major is to get out the general catalog and read about every major offered. I'm talking about going from Astronomy through Zoology! A to Z. That way you'll be familiar with all the requirements for each major and you can decide what would be interesting and what you would find boring.

+1 SmileWavy

College can paradoxically be a rude awakening for the really bright students because they never really needed to study in HS. All of a sudden what you were doing before (with accompanying great results) doesn't cut it, and you haven't built up the studying chops that some of the more mediocre HS students have already acquired in order to get by in HS.

Another observation: I graduated from college not too long ago (2002) and with the exception of two friends who matriculated wanting to be pre-med and are now doctors (neither very happy in their careers I might add), I don't know anyone who ended up in the career they envisioned for themselves when they were freshman. Don't let the "plan" get in the way of identifying and pursuing a line of studies that rings your bell... within reason, of course.

I was similar. I cruised through high school. I got A's in classes without homework and C's and even some D's in classes where homework was a high percentage of your grade. See, I could ace any high school test without studying, and I absorbed the material quickly. I read the chapters, but I didn't do the homework as I felt it was a waste of my time.

Then I got to college, and I finally felt challenged. I did the homework because I needed to in order to learn the material. I did problems the teacher didn't assign on the areas I was weak. I talked to my slacker friends and purposefully signed up for the professors they hated (because I knew they were challenging). I thoroughly enjoyed college.

Sid, I worked my arse off to get my Chem degree. And it has paid dividends consistently. Yeah I did some crap QC jobs to learn the trade end of it . Then progressed through QA, Analytical Development and Validation, Pre production support, Process validation, cGMP validations, then Laboratory Audits. Now I'm Assistant Director of Regulatory Affairs specializing in Scientific Liaison. Chemistry will open many doors for you. As Todd said, success in Chemistry is directly related to the amount of effort put into it.

Being bright can sometimes mean that it's possible for a person to have never really had to think or work at anything for a good deal of their adolescence.

I never once took home homework (unless it was some larger project) or studied more than the day of any test all the way until the end of high school.

Because of that, I never really knew how to study, or how to learn for that matter. Before that, everything just came natural.

And to be honest, after all this time I still haven't really gotten that down. Some people I see around here, you can tell, weren't always the brightest students, but they can study their asses off and get the grades in college because they have the work ethic, and anyone can learn anything if they work at it. Unfortunately for myself, when presented with a topic that I don't have naturally come to me or a magical understanding of (like all those things in high school)... I just 'brute force' it. I'm one of those people you see show up hungover to an exam because in efforts to try to study for it, I had downed a 12 pack the entire night before and accomplished nothing (thanks internet). I then get the test and, instead of having formula memorized like the rest of the people who studied, I'll derive them from scratch from the preceding governing equations.


Different people have different ways of learning. Sometimes you can't force it into yourself, but that doesn't mean you can't do it.

I'll second this, big time. I went to one of the top business schools in the country. I think I purchased a total of 5 books over my 4 years there. I came out with a quadruple major (Finance, Investments, Economics & Entrepreneurial Studies). I never studied and pulled a 3.2 in my majors.

However, my biggest regret is that I coasted and never really applied myself. I could and should be much further along (career wise) than I am now. I have great work ethics, just horrible "study ethics."

To top it off, I'm in IT (non-techincal) and don't use any of the fundamentals I learned in college. I have forgotten a majority of what I learned, because I've never applied it. Now I am a jack of all trades and master of none. Not a great place to be in, with this type of economy.

My parting advice is don't presume your future career, study your a** off and have some fun along the way. The other advice in this thread is solid, take it all in and find out which mix of it works for you.

got a poly sci degree, made money managing a bar. returned to college, bio/chem major, pre med. first test 29%! wtf?

bucked down, in two years the school hired me to teach chem to all the nursing students flunking chem. what a gig!!

try "Solving Problems for Chemical Principles" by Ted Musgrave, U of CO.

saved my ass.

chem is equations, and once you know how to set them up (which you learned once in Algebra), you can solve for any chem problem. Actually you don't solve a chemistry problem, you simplify.

All the advice in this thread has been very sound.

I tell you what did it for me. I took over a year off between HS and college in pursuit of a baseball dream.

I had to support myself, usually at jobs that required a strong back, a weak mind or both: construction laborer, mobile home mover, white water rafter, waiter, bartender, etc.

I saw a lot of bitter, old men full of regret and anger. The experiences from my time off from school really shaped my outlook on life.

I went to a very good school, earned dual degrees in Econ/Finance and International studies in 3 and one/half years.

I was ready to be in school...I studied hard because compared to hauling cinder blocks up a ramp in the hot sun, it wasn't.

Best of luck.

when I got that 29% on the first test, I was mortified. I spent EVERY afternoon in the corner of a room is science hall isolated, devouring every chem book i could find, till one made sense to me. (auto mannuals are the same way!!)

I worked problems....all the problems at the end of the chapter, and filled spiral notebooks with calculations. My middle finger still has a callous from holing the pencil. My theory is that if you work enough problems the knowledge of how chemistry works goes up from the pencil, up your arm and neck, and finally into your brain! Then, chem becomes FUN! After all, chemisrty is just cooking.:cool:

The janitor would throw me out at midnite. Soon, I was giving lectures on transcription, and translation in Biochem.

When I was in high school, the cell was round, and that dark spot in the middle was the nucleus. thats all they knew back then. Imagine what they knew when I went back and studied chemistry nearly 15 years later!!(1969 grad from hs, return to college 1985, after a few years of fogging my brain as a bartender)

I think that like a lot of others here, I was not challenged in HS, but I actually had to learn new things in Chem, (Physics is actually the same subject, just a different name, really!).

If you do not learn it now you will learn it later. might as well do it now.

Think of college as partly a place to learn certain subjects, partly a place to get a degree, but also partly - and not a small part - a place to learn study skills and work ethic.

I mean, it is best to come into college with those skills and ethic already formed, but if not, then you've got to get it there, and right away.

Not many of us will be lucky or talented enough to be successful in life without working very, very hard.

I had a job mowing lawns one summer in Sacramento, seemed like it was triple digits every day.

Menial labor in uncomfortable circumstances, great motivation to study hard and do well, again, just as you say Paul.

I've got to wonder if a lot of kids fail in college because their parents always provided everything for them and everything up until that point was pretty easy for them. College is just something they are expected to do and they think it will be just like high school.

Once I got my studying skills together, I thought the first two years of college were pretty easy. It was the last year when I was doing a double-major and working 20 hours a week that the pressure really got intense.

I can remember my parents always asking why I never brought books home and studied. They were always concerned I was falling behind in gradeschool, highschool. I remember the parent/teacher conferences in elementary school, my mother was always asking the teachers if I was doing OK. Of course I was. The teachers would always tell my mother how I must have had great study habits and I was always prepared.

I, however, remember the exact opposite. I never took a book home, never was prepared, and it didn't matter. I can remember my mother continually saying every year -"Next year will be harder." or "When you get to middle shcool, it gets tough." "When you get to high school, it gets hard, you will have to bring books home to study...."


And yet, it never did. I resent a bit that public school was such a walk, as I think I could have gone through most of the math classes and chemistry classes I took my freshman year of college by the time I was a junior in High school. Again, public school.... not gonna happen.


So I spent my last few years in high school drinking, partying, spending time with girls, and not giving a s***.

I got to college and my freshman semester I decided it would be simple- I took 19 hours plus a position on a research project. Bad idea. While I busted ass and pulled a 4.0 my first semester, my second I crashed and burned pretty hard.


To be honest, I still haven't recovered from all my bad habits formed in high school- I still put off work, don't study enough, etc... but I have a few more responsibilities now, like research that I get paid for and classes that I teach now instead of the other way around.


And if I could go back to my junior year in high school, theres two things I would consider doing- take night classes at a college and try to get ahead so I could get my BS faster and have my PhD by now or sooner..... or number two: party a lot harder.



Again it seems, only 50% of my advice is advisable.

I only can give you some general opinions. What I am doing now has something related to what I learned from school but not all. If talking about specific courses, I don't feel I have much from it. I would not choose a major/career base on 1 or several courses from school. I would choose it only base on what I will be doing after I am done with school. Why don't you go to several pharmacy stores like Wal-green and 1 or 2 in hospitals to see how they work and see if you like it.

Years ago, when I decided to change my major from EE, I had several majors in front of me and had the same thought as you do now. At the first pharmacy store I stood and watch, I knew it was not for me, but I still went to the hospital to watch, again, it's not me. I also went to a dentist I knew to talk to him while he was working.

You might this is unnecessary because everyone must have been at a pharmacy store or at the dentist but remember, when you go to the dentist to have your tooth done is different than when you come, sit, watch, and think about that is what you are going to do for the rest of your life.

funny stuff. very similar situation as myself. i actually quit school. had a decent job installing outdoor signs. had to install a marquis, and the boss didnt work it out with the electricians, on who had to dig the conduit trench. mark and i started digging a huge trench by hand...he stopped, and put his head in his hands...i asked, "what's up?", he replied, "cliff, look at us, we are effen ditch diggers!"

mark now owns a successful graphic design company. anyone that plays games at home by EA sports has seen his work. we moved on from the physical work, happily.

A friend of mine is over 40 and he still mows yards for extra money. He realized one day as he was paying his dues at the gym that we was paying to work out. He decided to go back to mowing for exercise and cash.

i drove a meat truck one summer, ....on my LAST day there was a drive by in front of the plant, great motivator, left for school next day