- #1
Nommo
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Hi all! This is my first post.
I'm currently in the third year of an arts program. For a while now I've been dissatisfied with the way my education and career have been heading, and I'm realizing that I'm much better suited to the natural sciences. Specifically, I've been teaching myself basic physics, stimulated by some material I covered in a multivariable calculus course, and have fallen in love with the subject. Now I'm thinking I would like nothing better than a career in this field.
Problem is, my formal science education ended in grade 11. At the time I was turned off to physics by a string of bad teachers and discouragement by my parents. Now I don't know what to do. I am very tempted to do a second bachelor's in physics and eventually go for grad school.
But all in all, I don't know if this is feasible or not, and I don't much relish the idea of being a 40-year-old post-doc. Here are some questions I have:
1. Is it hard to be accepted into a decent science department without having senior-year high school science under my belt? I'll have an okay math background by the time I graduate, including differential equations and some real analysis, but no science. I'm guessing that this might be a huge obstacle. I also guess that even simply having a first degree might disqualify me from many schools.
2. If I were accepted into a degree program, would I be able to fast-track through it at all? I figure I would be able to at least test out of first-year physics, but I have no lab experience, and I suppose they wouldn't give me a B.Sc if I didn't cover freshman-level general science.
3. Is there any stigma attached to being an older (relative to most of my peers, as a first-year) grad student, or beginning post-doc?
And finally, this is more subjective, but do you think all this is worth it? Does anyone have experience with a post-bachelor's change of track like this? Thanks in advance for any comments!
I'm currently in the third year of an arts program. For a while now I've been dissatisfied with the way my education and career have been heading, and I'm realizing that I'm much better suited to the natural sciences. Specifically, I've been teaching myself basic physics, stimulated by some material I covered in a multivariable calculus course, and have fallen in love with the subject. Now I'm thinking I would like nothing better than a career in this field.
Problem is, my formal science education ended in grade 11. At the time I was turned off to physics by a string of bad teachers and discouragement by my parents. Now I don't know what to do. I am very tempted to do a second bachelor's in physics and eventually go for grad school.
But all in all, I don't know if this is feasible or not, and I don't much relish the idea of being a 40-year-old post-doc. Here are some questions I have:
1. Is it hard to be accepted into a decent science department without having senior-year high school science under my belt? I'll have an okay math background by the time I graduate, including differential equations and some real analysis, but no science. I'm guessing that this might be a huge obstacle. I also guess that even simply having a first degree might disqualify me from many schools.
2. If I were accepted into a degree program, would I be able to fast-track through it at all? I figure I would be able to at least test out of first-year physics, but I have no lab experience, and I suppose they wouldn't give me a B.Sc if I didn't cover freshman-level general science.
3. Is there any stigma attached to being an older (relative to most of my peers, as a first-year) grad student, or beginning post-doc?
And finally, this is more subjective, but do you think all this is worth it? Does anyone have experience with a post-bachelor's change of track like this? Thanks in advance for any comments!
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