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Sigh. I've been thinking a lot about what I want to do when I get my degree, but I'm not so sure anymore.
I'm an undergraduate student majoring in psychology, and my GPA hasn't been consistent. I went from a 3.0 my first year to about a 2.65 currently. It's not terrible, but it's not great, either. It'll get me a degree, but it likely won't get me into graduate school.
The problem with a two- or four-year degree in liberal arts or social sciences is that it's relatively useless in that area without a graduate degree.
For example, a degree in accounting means you're going to go into accounting. A degree in psychology (or sociology, or history, or English) doesn't work the same way. Sure, I can still get a job, but it likely won't be a meaningful job or a job that can become a career.
About a year ago, I was absolutely certain I wanted to go to a decent graduate school that offered a stipend, and get a PhD in clinical psychology. I would have had a lot of options doing that. I could become a professor, or do research, or provide therapy, or hell, I could have even become an analyst for the CIA.
But given my current GPA, it's doubtful I'll get into a good graduate school. Even if I do get in, it's doubtful I'll get a sizeable stipend, if one at all.
But psychology isn't the only thing I want to do with my life. I've wanted to be a police officer since I was a kid. I think it'd be a great job; you get to drive around all day, enforce laws that social deviants think they're above, and I'd actually be in a position to help others. The only problems with this are that it's not exactly easy to become an officer. There are high drop-out rates from the Academy, and it's not exactly a job that constantly has open positions.
I could also go into teaching. I love having the summer off, and some topics I'd love to talk about all day. I like social studies (obviously), I like history to a certain extent, and I'm a grammar Nazi so I could even teach English.
I just felt like ranting.
 
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to be fair you have a pretty easy major, but yeah i feel you. i went from 4.0 and it slowly declined, and went back up a little. little by little, im basically where you are in terms of gpa. sometimes its like 'what happened?'
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redo this year, get above 3.5 gpa and then take the MCAT and go to medical school. there u go
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On March 20 2008 11:55 Superiorwolf wrote:
redo this year, get above 3.5 gpa and then take the MCAT and go to medical school. there u go
lol kid it's not that easy
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Canada9720 Posts
for a grammar nazi you seem to misuse semi-colons a lot, but i'll chalk it up to carelessness.
a friend of mine wants to become a clinical psychologist. good luck, whatever you choose
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On March 20 2008 11:57 TheMusiC wrote:Show nested quote +On March 20 2008 11:55 Superiorwolf wrote:
redo this year, get above 3.5 gpa and then take the MCAT and go to medical school. there u go lol kid it's not that easy
my brother is in uc berkeley doing exactly that and recently completed the MCAT with a high score. I almost never saw him for the past few months in preparation for that test. Goes to show what you can do when your motivated and want to achieve something, in contrast to when you don't try at all.
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On March 20 2008 11:57 CTStalker wrote:
for a grammar nazi you seem to misuse semi-colons a lot, but i'll chalk it up to carelessness.
a friend of mine wants to become a clinical psychologist. good luck, whatever you choose
There are six grammatical errors in that post alone. I don't misuse them; I overuse them. 
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On March 20 2008 11:44 Raithed wrote:
to be fair you have a pretty easy major, but yeah i feel you. i went from 4.0 and it slowly declined, and went back up a little. little by little, im basically where you are in terms of gpa. sometimes its like 'what happened?'
Yeah, I'm not complaining about the major--I just want to get my degree and get out. I'm getting sick and tired of memorizing shit to take a test so I can forget it all six months later. Every semester just gets more and more stressful, and I don't really feel like I'm learning that much anymore.
I used to love going to class, but now it just feels like a chore. :/
And yes, I'm in my third year, but I'm about one semester behind, so I'll have to make that up in there somewhere. :/
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On March 20 2008 12:09 Superiorwolf wrote:Show nested quote +On March 20 2008 11:57 TheMusiC wrote:On March 20 2008 11:55 Superiorwolf wrote:
redo this year, get above 3.5 gpa and then take the MCAT and go to medical school. there u go lol kid it's not that easy my brother is in uc berkeley doing exactly that and recently completed the MCAT with a high score. I almost never saw him for the past few months in preparation for that test. Goes to show what you can do when your motivated and want to achieve something, in contrast to when you don't try at all.
He said it's not easy - not that it can't be done.
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On March 20 2008 12:17 Vin{MBL} wrote:Show nested quote +On March 20 2008 12:09 Superiorwolf wrote:On March 20 2008 11:57 TheMusiC wrote:On March 20 2008 11:55 Superiorwolf wrote:
redo this year, get above 3.5 gpa and then take the MCAT and go to medical school. there u go lol kid it's not that easy my brother is in uc berkeley doing exactly that and recently completed the MCAT with a high score. I almost never saw him for the past few months in preparation for that test. Goes to show what you can do when your motivated and want to achieve something, in contrast to when you don't try at all. He said it's not easy - not that it can't be done.
He said it's not that easy in reference to my post... My description of the post obviously understates the difficulty of completing the task yet the concept is simple: Realize your aspiration, work hard, and achieve it. His post implied that your 'average joe' could not accomplish such a feat.
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Calgary26003 Posts
How people can complain about school is beyond me. Wait until you're grinding 9 to 5, and then you'll see what you've missed.
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I'm not complaining about school at all; I'm just ranting because I've hit that "I have no idea what I want to do with my degree" point. I've actually met a lot of people in liberal arts or social science programs who feel the same way. That makes sense, though. If you knew exactly what you wanted to do, you'd be in accounting, or engineering, or something more focused.
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On March 20 2008 11:57 TheMusiC wrote:Show nested quote +On March 20 2008 11:55 Superiorwolf wrote:
redo this year, get above 3.5 gpa and then take the MCAT and go to medical school. there u go lol kid it's not that easy
yes but that's superiorwolf you are talking to, better than the average wolf/ med student.
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On March 20 2008 13:05 Chill wrote:
How people can complain about school is beyond me. Wait until you're grinding 9 to 5, and then you'll see what you've missed.
that's where the stress comes from, everyone in liberal arts who isn't from a wealthy family (not a whole lot in many places) and who really loves useless arts shit has grade school as the one hopefully possibility to escape doing something less ideal.
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On March 20 2008 12:22 Superiorwolf wrote:Show nested quote +On March 20 2008 12:17 Vin{MBL} wrote:On March 20 2008 12:09 Superiorwolf wrote:On March 20 2008 11:57 TheMusiC wrote:On March 20 2008 11:55 Superiorwolf wrote:
redo this year, get above 3.5 gpa and then take the MCAT and go to medical school. there u go lol kid it's not that easy my brother is in uc berkeley doing exactly that and recently completed the MCAT with a high score. I almost never saw him for the past few months in preparation for that test. Goes to show what you can do when your motivated and want to achieve something, in contrast to when you don't try at all. He said it's not easy - not that it can't be done. He said it's not that easy in reference to my post... My description of the post obviously understates the difficulty of completing the task yet the concept is simple: Realize your aspiration, work hard, and achieve it. His post implied that your 'average joe' could not accomplish such a feat.
pardon the cliche, but this is much much easier said than done (as you said so yourself). never mind what i think that the "average joe" can or cannot do -- my post was simply saying that you vastly underestimate just how difficult doing that really is. OP said his GPA was what, a 2.65? pulling it up almost an entire point would require at least a couple more hours per semester and very good grades... and unlike high school, most classes only get harder as you progress through college. put this workload on top of the ridiculous amount of studying you'll need to do well on tests like the MCATs/LSATs and you'll probably go insane before you can achieve those aspirations.
as far as your "average joe" being able to pull off something like this, i'll say both yes and no to that. yes in that if they invest enough time into something, then for sure eventually they'll figure it out and do well. however, the amount of time it takes for them to get to that point simply might not be reasonable at all. i'm sitting here at one of the best business schools in the united states, and i still know people who'll study their nuts off for an exam (or spend upwards of a year studying for LSATs) and do poorly, whereas others can just read the material once and be done with it (obviously for MCATs/LSATs the latter is not true; everyone has to study for that shit just because there's so much material and the tests are so difficult). in the music world (which i have the most experience in, as far as colleges and admissions go), we would call this "talent," but i think that undergraduate/graduate admissions for music are a lot harsher than regular academic admissions, because no matter how good you are or how much/well you prepare, the decision is always subjective and up to the professor who hears your audition (and i'm not saying that some people are just born dumb, i'm just saying that some people have a better knack for certain subjects than others do... i would always get pretty good grades in math courses with little effort, but i would get raped most of the time by my science courses regardless of how much i studied).
tl;dr - my post implied nothing other than you have no idea how difficult it is to do what you said given the OP's circumstances, even if he is motivated T_T
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On March 20 2008 13:05 Chill wrote:
How people can complain about school is beyond me. Wait until you're grinding 9 to 5, and then you'll see what you've missed.
oh man this is so true
school has gotta be the greatest thing ever
i'm in 2nd year right now, but currently grinding 9-5 for a few months (well 8-6 actually but still) and i'm counting days til i go back to school :'( (25 workdays left woot!)
it's like i have a timeline on fun here, only 2.5 years left until i graduate, until the 9-5 garbage becomes permanent (or grad school first). le sigh
i gotta figure out how to avoid it T_T
and @rpf. work your ass off so you can stay in school for a few years longer @ graduate level. aside from school being the greatest thing ever, it'll also widen your options significantly as you've already said (this is my plan as of now anyway)
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Braavos36402 Posts
i hate to say i told you so, but i remember you posting in several university topics about how your psych education and gpa were going to lead to lots options and a well-paying job. you even went as far as to say there's little to no difference between your school's psych program and harvard's. well here's the difference, if you come out with a bad gpa at harvard, you can still get a great, stable job that leads to a career.
first step toward improving your life is admitting you've fucked up and then doing as much as you can to change it. work your ass off the final year or two to at least pull that horrible gpa up past 3.0, and then work really hard on job or grad school apps (study hard for the GRE). it's bad that it took you two years to realize it and it's not going to come easy, but it's better than graduating with a 2.5.
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Well, I hate to say it, but those comments were idealistic. They had no basis in reality.
I'm comforted by the fact that obtaining a degree is significantly better than not, but I'm still in the same position as everyone else with a bachelor's degree in a liberal art or social science: without a graduate degree, my degree is relatively useless in the area of study I obtained it in. Kind of ironic, isn't it?
That's the advantage to getting a degree in a math or science field: you go directly into that field. It seems like the social sciences and liberal arts require another step in education.
I'm honestly not upset by that--like I said, I'm glad I'll be getting a degree. A lot of people don't have one. Neither of my parents have one. Hopefully I can turn things around my last year. I'll probably have to go another semester to make up a few credits worth of classes, as I'm currently behind by almost a semester.
Hot_Bid, if you have any tips with regards to studying or taking notes, I'd welcome them. 
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How do you "redo" a year without failing? I certainly can't do that with my courses...
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I wasn't sure what he meant by that, either. I think he just meant to just do your best with what time you have left.
I know that at my university I can have up to 15 credits removed from my transcript so I can take the class again, which I did with my sociology class, but I couldn't redo an entire year. :|
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On March 20 2008 13:05 Chill wrote:
How people can complain about school is beyond me. Wait until you're grinding 9 to 5, and then you'll see what you've missed.
I wish you werent so right with this, but part of me wants 9-5 over the random bs hours i get, working like
mon - 9-5
tues -7-1
wed-off
thurs - off
fri - 12-10
sat- 8-2, then 5-10
sun - 6-4
and the like, the hours cooks work are retarded, this is just one schedule that i have been fucked with, and it changes weekly, so a new item can be used to rape me.
Seriously though, once you get out into the work world, school will seem like a safe haven.
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EPT
