Thanks for the warm welcome :)
As for my favorite fish, I'll go with the dwarf angelfish. I always thought they looked kinda cool.
ThinkToday said:
Welcome,
So, lurking about for?? Are you HS, College, Grad school, old guy? Details
Details eh? I've changed my major a few times. Initially I wanted to get a fine arts degree in photography and take the pre-reqs for a naturopathic med school. Somewhere along the way I felt like I was mixing up love with career goals (that and a formal degree in
fine art seems contradictory).
As a biology major I had a great opportunity when I was invited to an intro research class (only a handful of people were invited each semester). There I was exposed to the research process, and in the end joined a research group at the university as an undergrad (more details on that later if you're curious).
I had never taken physics, it wasn't even offered at my high school. People kept saying that I would hate it, naturally I put it off. When I did take my first physics class (trig based), I loved it. I had a remarkable prof who tied everything we covered to rl situations; he really inspired and pushed me to think about things from a more well-rounded perspective and encouraged me to think. (I say that because I was one of the students who in grade school got all A's and didn't have anyone there to challenge me or make me work harder, but the disappointment of the educational system here is a topic for another thread).
I changed my major to physics, and with the large number of credits i had accumulated i am officially a junior- though I'm supposed to graduate fall '14. This fall I'm taking unit phy 2 (since id only taken trig based before), along with calc 3, lin alg, and a java programming class. Since I am ahead with my credit hrs and am playing catch up w phy until spring, I am working on some computational math stuff to keep myself at full time enrollment.
It's funny because a while back I was almost ashamed to say that I was still working on my undergrad. Running into more and more peers from high school, I've noticed many aren't happy with their career path or they have a dead end job because they hated the degree program the "settled on". I'm passionate about learning, so I don't so much mind that I haven't finished my undergrad yet. I'm thankful to have a wonderful support system and a good job that let me pay for school, this fall is the first loan ill be taking :) . (I actually just resigned from my position, i want to spend more time on school stuff and academia).
Anyways, I plan on going to grad school though I haven't picked a school yet. I am going to try and get a TA position at the university, continue working as a tutor, and talk to some profs about undergrad research opportunities. On that note, I took a 400 lvl engineering class last semester about applied ethics and future technologies and that really piqued my interest- highly complex issues. I am not sure exactly what kind of research that prof does, but I plan to meet with him to see if he's looking for any undergrad help.
As for the "old guy" part, haha, I'm a youngish (23yo) chick! :P
