Thinking of changing my major from Biology to International Affairs. Advice needed.

[Ammonium]

I should preface this with that I am currently enrolled as a post baccalaureate biology major. I received a BA in Anthropology in the spring of 2008 then re-enrolled a few weeks after graduation to do the bio major. All of this is at the university of georgia.

Now, basically I'm getting my ass kicked in my major course work and frankly find it difficult to really make what I'm having to learn seem important. I've always liked international policy and economics and the best grades I ever made in college were in my cultural anthropology classes where we discussed American foreign policy/schools of economic thought and their effects on cultures around the world.

I guess I'm looking for some re-assurances that dumping bio for international affairs is a good idea? Ideally I'd like to go to grad school or perhaps law school. I'm fortunate in that I come from a family that paying for my continued education isn't a huge issue, as long as I'm trying and that there is an endgame. So, DU, what are your opinions? Anyone on here have a degree in IA?

[Sanity Claws]

1. I don't see much of a market for IA majors

I have friends who hold graduate degrees from Columbia University School of International and Public Affairs. One is unemployed. One is underemployed and is always looking for something else. Another floundered for a couple of years until he went into something completely different.

I would not recommend it.

BTW, I also would not recommend law school. But that will be the subject of another thread, I guess.

[rug]

2. For law school, it doesn't matter what your major is.

[Deep13]

21. Yeah, but law school su-u-ucks!

Seriously, the I would caution anyone thinking about it. It's a neurotic profession filed with neurotic people and clients with unrealistic expectations in depressing situations (who can't pay you.)

[Chan790]

23. You sound like my lawyer.

Well, the lawyer I'd use if I ever needed a lawyer. He's an acquaintance, one of my clients at work. I've heard he's brutal in a court room but man can that guy piss and moan.

"Man, these fuckers...I've got enough bad checks to wallpaper my can with. I told one guy he was going to have to pay me cash and he tried to give me counterfeit 100s. I'm saying 'Thanks a lot, I keep you outta prison and believe you when you say you've never done a bad thing in your life. When you get caught passing funny money and need a lawyer, call someone else.'"

I said "Lou, aren't you an immigration lawyer?" "Well yeah, but sometimes you like a guy and want to do him a favor so you take a case. I don't like this guy, he's a prick. He'd beat his own mother for the chewed half of a Twinkie."

(After I mentioned I had to spend all morning filling paperwork for the fraud investigations unit of the bank regarding an unnamed client.) "Really? Does he need a lawyer? Wait, what's he being investigated for? Check kiting? You should send him to (a competing law firm that is also a client)."

"Man, I got this guy...he cheats at solitaire."

[Kali]

3. stay away from anthro if you plan to be able to live, eat, and pay bills

:rofl:

[TZ]

4. If you wish to get into politics that s a good degree to have

Maybe law as well as someone else said. I have a relative who used to teach Poli Sci and that was a common major in his classes. If you do decide to do that you will need a graduate degree as well most likely.

[GoCubsGo]

5. You need a graduate degree for pretty much anything these days.

Including Biology and International Affairs. Even then, it doesn't always help.

[TZ]

6. Actually in biology (biotech) a BS is BETTER than a PhD in some ways

I have had many PhD's tell me so...There's a glut of advanced degrees....Right now its a basic degree and relevant experience that matters...I have no need to get a Master's...I have the job experience that equates it...Most of the people who hold the same title as I do have a Masters or even PhD's....

[elleng]

7. Law probably more useful than IA, bio or any science probably most useful,

but if you're struggling with bio I'd get out and head to law school, from which you can go anywhere, including IA-type work.

GOOD LUCK!

[Chan790]

8. Most people will tell you to run far far away from IA.

As someone who had to take a course of study in it as part of my major and has friends working in that field at all levels, I will not. (at-least, yet.) I have three questions instead first.

1.) Do you speak at-least two foreign languages, one of which is not Spanish, French or German?

2.) Are you flexible on relocation, inclusive of potentially non-desirable locations. (I mean the underdeveloped so-called "global south", not Des Moines.)

3.) What, very-specifically, are you career aspirations?

[Ammonium]

9. Most people told me to run from Anthropology but I really enjoyed it

1) I speak English(native) and French
2) I'm semi-flexible in that I'd like to stay within the United States. My partner is in Vet school currently so uprooting her to move to someone outside of the US would not help her career at all.
3) Analysis in either the public or private sector.

I love politics, economics, and watching how states and corporations interact with each other.

[Curmudgeoness]

10. Go where your heart takes you, but from your answers to the

questions posed, IA is not the major you should pursue. I have my degree in biology, and yes, it is a difficult subject to study, but I was always so intrigued by it. If you aren't interested, get out of it. If you are interested but just think you have to work too hard at it, get back to the books and stop wasting time here!

But really, from what you say you want to do, I don't see biology as your future. Ask yourself, what do you think you can do with whatever major you go for?

[Chan790]

11. Advice.

*Pick up a second foreign language if you can. It's a big selling point in a rough and frankly-overcrowded field. Alternately, if you have the chance to travel or develop a strong cultural-fluency (particularly someplace off the beaten path. There's a lot fewer people who understand Algerian culture than French. Both are French-speaking nations.), that will improve your career mobility and value greatly.

*For what you're looking to do in IA, graduate school is pretty-much necessary. You might want to consider a more-specific focused program for your field as that will give you a leg up on other applicants...people in IA are common; people in IA who have a strong understand (or background) of economics or security-studies or sustainable-development or international law or...are more valuable because they bring something to the table which is difficult to find. Don't worry about being too specialized, it's the generalists who are underemployed.

Both basically come down to stand-out.

[blueknight]

12. do whats best for you

if you want to go to law school, you dont have to have a hard major like biology. my daughter is extremely bright ( 34 ACT ) and has biology for a major, and she says it is EXTREMELY HARD. she wants to go to med school is the main reason she is in it.

[wickerwoman]

14. You might consider Planning

and then focus on the international angle. It combines politics, economics, law, sociology, architecture and environmental sciences and they *love* people with science backgrounds who can do environmental planning so your biology degree would still be a plus.

[XemaSab]

16. That's a good call

It's also a fairly recession-proof career. :)

[applegrove]

13. I studied economics and enjoy being able to understand all the is going on in the world. So you'll

have that foreign policy background to make for an interesting life. That being said it is said that some of the people who should have been scientists in the last few decades ended up as bankers because of the remuneration and that seems like such a shame for me to hear about the world losing one more scientist.

[RandomThoughts]

15. Is that a comment on social engineering?

There are some that think they can create society with testable repeatable methods that people have followed.

What they do not compute is the simple act of change of what is existence. shrug.

[Chan790]

20. I'm not sure I'd agree with some of that.

I was pushed very very hard for a career in the sciences from all directions (I've excelled at it academically for as long as I can recall)...like many of my cohort, growing up in an environment where we had the liberality and freedom to choose our life's passion and work to an extent our parents and grandparents and our friends from less-affluent cultures did not, we chose not to go into the sciences.

I can say in my case and that of a lot of my closest friends from HS and college the reasons for that have a lot less to do with money than a genuine disinterest in the sciences. I am the bane of my best friend's father, a retired NASA astrophysicist, because I had the audacity to honestly state that I didn't care how celestial mechanics or gravity worked as long as it kept happening. Really, I don't...science is a yawner for me. I like the humanities and while I'm not exactly fond of my job as a banker, I'd do it over just about any job in the hard sciences even at half the pay. That was my choice to make.

Contrasting that, we have my friend Alex, the son of semi-affluent immigrants from pre-Saddam Baghdad. Alex is a biomechanical engineer. I asked him one day and he admitted he's not sure why he has a passion for it; when he was 8, his father informed him that he was going to be a biomedical engineer when he grew up. That was the end of the discussion...it was the most-safe route to insured upper-middle-class prosperity. The possibility of a field that was not "fail-safe" (and realistically that means any field outside the sciences and business.) was not an option for him. Alex isn't really unique within many newly-affluent new-middle-class global cultures ...if America wants to improve its' scientific standing it should take a lesson from the cultures that are bypassing it and should start pushing science as a way out of poverty, even if it means lowering the bar for access to science careers.

More briefly, I doubt that the world lost many scientists who would not have been unhappy scientists. It's losing a lot more potential scientists who lack the means to become scientists. Frankly, I'd rather fall behind in the sciences because people are free to not want to be scientists, but I can't be happy knowing that science isn't being presented as an option contrasted to basketball, rap-mogul or the military to kids trapped in small-town or inner-city poverty.

[applegrove]

24. You are right that the bar is set pretty high for scientists. My sister had mono in university and

had to drop out of the sciences because she missed so much school. She ended up in business and freely admitted that it wasn't he most interesting job in the world for her, though she was pretty high up and had her pick of jobs. She has been at home with the kids and does charity work on the side. Her husband is in venture capitalism and does have an interesting time doing that.

[XemaSab]

17. Are you studying general biology, or something more specific?

If you go into something like botany or wildlife biology the core classes are hard and boring, but they get more interesting as you go through the major.

[Ammonium]

18. Just general biology

I've only got three classes left before I'm done but they're all core major classes. Genetics, Biochem, and Cell bio.

[XemaSab]

19. If you've only got three classes left, stick with it!

:bounce:

[Kali]

22. I totally agree!

yes they are difficult classes, even if you are "into" the subject, but still...only 3 to go? finish!