In the next few posts, titled “Catch Up Series”, I will provide you with some background to my career and academic history.
In this Part One post, I’ll describe a little bit about the start of my strange journey leading me to where I am now.
As I have mentioned in my “About Me” section, I graduated with a degree in Chemical Engineering and a minor in Business and Accounting. However, these areas of study were not what I had initially planned on entering. I was dead set on becoming a doctor. This was conditioned into me since birth by my family. Due to this, I entered college as “undeclared”, not having a clue what major would best help me get into a medical school.
An Identity Crisis…
Throughout the summer leading up to the first quarter of college, the idea of entering the medical field became less appealing the more I learned about the process of becoming a physician. I realized I can’t force myself to re-enter a cycle of endless studying, borrowing loans, and constant exams. I became the stereotype of the confused Freshman who does not know what they want to do in life.
Thanks to this identity crisis, I went from “Undeclared” to Biology to Biochemistry to finally settling on Chemical Engineering. Why Chemical Engineering? Well…I don’t know why either. At the time I was sick and tired of being in limbo not knowing what I wanted. I felt behind, everyone seemed so put together and ready to conquer their future. How is it that I was playing “Catch Up” starting from day one? I figured hey I really like chemistry so I will stick with that and it will be my final switch. However, when I mentioned this to my freshman roommate at the time he said, “Chemistry? Why? Do it if you want to be a researcher, but if you want to make any money then you should probably do chemical engineering”.
That was it. I did not want to be a researcher but rather simply wanted a good-paying job out of college.
I will continue my tale in the next Catch Up Series post. Catch ya next time!
-E J
