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What Major and Minors to Take to Keep My Career Options Flexible?
As far as future careers go, I'm deciding between two: psychologist, or have my own business (clothing). I'm not sure what particular field of psychology I'd go into if I decided to do that. I'm in my senior year of high school now and am looking into majors and minors at the college I'm thinking about going to.
I would definitely major in psychology, but since I want to keep my options open in case I go the other route, I was thinking I'd take General Business as a minor. Is this a good plan? Would it be enough education to go either way?
A couple more questions:
What are the different fields of psychology, and what sort of education is needed for each one? This would probably be a lot to answer, but I would be so grateful if someone could answer this! There are so many different areas and I'm not sure what kind and how much education is required for all of them.
If this will help, here are somewhat more specific areas of psychology that I might consider: clinical psychology, cognitive and perceptual psychology, counseling psychology, developmental psychology, forensic psychology, health psychology, neuropsychology, rehabilitation psychology, school psychology, social psychology.
Next question:
How many minors would it be reasonable to take? From what I've seen it seems like you can take as many as you want, but I'd like to know how many would be reasonable? Like, the most you could take without being overwhelmed? Because other than General business there are one or two other minors I'd be interested in taking, but I don't want to end up taking on too much.
Update:
I have one more question: Would a bachelor's degree in science allow me to earn a master's in psychology?
Thanks so much in advance!
#psychology
#entrepreneurship
#college
#college-major
#college-minors
#business
3 answers
Janice Klima
Janice’s Answer
G. Mark Stewart
G. Mark’s Answer
I'll go out on a limb here and propose a solution I personally favor. First, it's helpful to combine something you personally are passionate about and enjoy with something practical that, ideally, can support that first something. In my case, I took courses in writing, art, and music, and eventually combined those with engineering and science -- specifically computer science. For my purposes, since computers are applicable to just about everything, anything learned about them is valuable. I was lucky that I enjoyed all of these things. If you can find a major and minor that are synergistic -- i. e., knowledge in one helps or works with or supports knowledge in the other, great. Writing, for example, is a help in life in general and certainly in communicating your ideas about anything else you might want to do. Next, I'll give you the three really hot technologies right now that will take off and touch nearly every part of our lives. First, Artificial Intelligence -- specifically machine learning and deep learning. Any bit of knowledge you can get about this will come in handy even if for no other reason than to understand what's happening to our world. The second is robotics. This is destined to become a science for everyone, and again, any knowledge you get will help you get a job to support whatever else you'd like to do. This second, along with the first, will work with the Internet of Things (IOT), which will link all of this together in a giant network we're all getting familiar with right now. And that will generate the third Big Thing -- Big Data. The more our world is connected to each other part and the more our network is collecting information sensed and stored from all the machines and sensors and people and animals in the world, the more AI will be able to model and predict our world and help us see how it all fits together and what patterns are generated for future advancements. These are three huge areas, and it is highly likely that anything you choose will be touched by them. So get out there and explore.
Ashley Santos
Ashley’s Answer
These are great questions! Psychology can actually be very helpful for your clothing business. You can minor in entrepreneurship and/or marketing which could also help with psychology if you want to open your own practice. A consumer behavior class would really tie the two together well!