LogFAQs > #965286359

So what is your situation like? Have you just graduated from high school? Are you a returning adult student? You really ought to have some kind of plan worked out before you ever set foot on campus. Otherwise, what are you doing with your time and money? STEM programs and the path to becoming a teacher are both pretty strict and don't leave much wiggle room. You can't just take a bunch of generals and then randomly decide to go for engineering in your second year.

There are college-level open textbooks now for subjects like chemistry and physics, so you can see over a couple of days whether or not you might have any interest if you've been out of school for a long time. You can get started right now doing something like making your first app or simple website to see if you might enjoy computer science. If you find you can't learn on your own or with minimal help from others, you might be in trouble as the field requires constant learning. Interest helps a ton, because even if you manage to land a job, a person who enjoys doing it and stays current will end up replacing you sooner or later.

If you are even thinking about engineering or physics, how is your math? If you've never taken calculus or precalculus, you're already in trouble. Anyone taking engineering classes or physics as a major likes doing math, is good at it, and comes to college with calculus already under their belt. If you don't like doing math, go ahead and cross physics and literally any kind of engineering off your list of possibles. And you have to be able to at least stomach it to get a CS degree (advanced stuff like machine learning requires gobs of math, whereas someone building a simple website just needs to survive calculus and discrete to get the degree done).

I'm less sure about education. I think we have a teacher or two around here who might be able to comment? From what I saw in college, you have to really want it to survive the rigors of the program, but that might vary between schools.

There is no degree that is going to print money for you. You need to at least like what you are doing enough to throw yourself into it and become good enough to ask someone to pay you a decent salary for doing whatever that thing is with a straight face. If you see any opportunities to pick up more soft skills or general business skills, make sure and take those too. You don't need to be at the top of your class, but you need to not suck and get ahead of most of your peers or else how are you going to get a job?