Coming into college I knew I wanted to be a biology major, as a hundred or so other people thought and eventually abandoned the sciences for other intellectual pursuits I continued to enjoy and be fascinated by what biology and understanding of our body, cells and humans can do. Yet, with graduation approaching and the end of my undergraduate learning, I believe many people are at a crossroads. Yes, we put in four years of work towards taking classes for our major, focusing on specific classes for specialization where our interests lay, and fieldwork/research/internships further studies in our major but we’ve also done more outside of our major. Whether that’s a job to fund our education, internship, shadowing opportunity, fieldwork, minor/emphasis courses, liberal arts “other” course not under our major and involvement in the community that may interest us just as much as our major did in the beginning.
Sometimes four years of hard hitting academics within our major and focuses tires us out when graduation approaches. Not many individuals choose to pursue continued education immediately after undergrad, the ones who do have a clear path they are pursuing. And its taken me awhile and my own personal experience, it can be okay to not know what we want to do post-undergrad or doing work that is not directly related to our major, not directly related to our $240,000+ education that we received. It’s okay to be uncertain, to do something new, to do something that pays the bill, to travel and fulfill some dreams and all will hopefully well in the future.