School & Career Guidance: Math, Computers & Science

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Discussion Overview

The discussion revolves around career guidance for a high school student interested in math, computers, and science. Participants explore various fields such as computer science, accounting, physics, and engineering, while expressing concerns about job prospects and the nature of work in these areas.

Discussion Character

  • Exploratory
  • Debate/contested
  • Conceptual clarification

Main Points Raised

  • One participant expresses uncertainty about pursuing computer science due to the rapid obsolescence of skills and languages.
  • Another participant highlights that science jobs require continuous learning, which they find more enjoyable than accounting, which involves memorizing changing rules.
  • Concerns are raised about the lack of clear job titles for physicists in industry, with many working in roles that do not explicitly label them as physicists.
  • A participant advises against forming opinions about computer engineering based solely on high school experiences with programming languages, suggesting that actual engineering involves different skills and knowledge.
  • Another participant asserts that there are many job opportunities in academia and industry for those with physics and math backgrounds, but emphasizes the importance of knowing where to look.

Areas of Agreement / Disagreement

Participants express differing views on the viability and nature of careers in computer science, physics, and engineering. There is no consensus on the best path forward for the original poster, and multiple perspectives on job prospects and educational experiences are presented.

Contextual Notes

Participants mention the importance of understanding the specific skills required in engineering versus programming, as well as the variability in job titles and roles within the physics field. There is an acknowledgment of the need for further exploration and research into potential career paths.

Shawkin
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So, I'm entering my final year in high school and I'm trying to get a read on what I should do in the future. I've bounced around quite a bit in what I want to do as a possible career. The only things I've been sure of are my love of math, computers, and science.
First I started by looking into computer science/engineering, and after learning a couple of computer languages (C++,Java,HTML/JavaScript) I decided that wasn't for me. I don't think I could keep up with the whole "learn this- oops its obsolete, learn this" feeling which I got out of it.
Next, I moved on to accounting. How bad could it be? Numbers, Math, Computers? That's about the time I learned about memorizing accounting laws, and how frequently they change.
So I set my sights on just getting a degree in math or physics, and doing research so that I could actually use what I learned, and have fun with it. So I checked out possible job prospects...and I found that physics and math degrees get you computer and engineering jobs...But I saw no truly physics or math oriented jobs, you know where I just set down and churn out math problems, or set up some experiment with optics or sub-atomic particles.

So, my question is, what should I do? What can I do that involves me doing things with math and science (Other than chemistry) ? Are there really jobs out there just doing research with physics/math? Teaching is about the only thing I could dig up, and teaching isn't what I would like to do. I'm in need of assistance.
 
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Shawkin said:
"learn this- oops its obsolete, learn this"

In science jobs you're constantly having to learn new stuff. It's just more fun to learn about science than about accounting because the rules aren't man-made and arbitrary.

There are a lot of physicists in industry, but most of them don't have business cards that say "physicist" on them. And most people doing pure physics research are in academia or national labs.
 
Don't base your POV of computer engineering through C++, C, HTML, Java. You'll take C/C++ classes, but I doubt any Java/HTML.

You'll be doing a lot of hardware design/programming as well. Completely different scene.

As I learned, you can't really gauge whether or not you want to do computer/electrical engineering through your high school experience. Sure, you may know that you like physics and math, and that's a great start. But for the actual engineering part, you can't really gauge that early on. It's something you have to take classes on to get a feeler, or better yet go to MIT OCW's site and look at some of their notes. You'll find a great resource there, as far as what to expect. But whatever you do, please, don't think HTML/Java is computer engineering -- you're wayyy off base.
 
There are TONS of jobs out there working for universities, colleges, big buissneses, etc. you just got to know where to look...
 

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