We fetishize certain jobs and it is not good

 There are many jobs out there for many people. Some people want to become plumbers, some doctors, some lawyers, but how can you really know if a job is a good fit? It is hard to tell; you can figure it out through life experience and self-discovery, but the average college graduate is 22 years old, and many do not have it figured out by this point. If you cannot figure out what's a good fit, you can go the psychometric route like me and take a personality or aptitude test to figure out what you're good at or what your tendencies are. But this costs a lot of time and money that not everyone has. My personal feeling is that when you're in your most impressionable years you should take a wide range of courses in high school and college and learn to specialize later.

When I was growing up, I always thought I was going to be a doctor. I brought this thought with me from my sophomore year of high school until I dropped the whole endeavor when I was in my third year of college. The thing is I always liked science and math, and my own delusion as well as societal pressure told me if I score high on science and math tests then I should aspire to go into medicine. Well, the realities of college hit me hard, and I struggled to pull As in the most important classes in a pre-med track and as a B and B+ student that wasn't going to cut it. All the while, once I "finished" the track I realized I didn't even like the idea of "doctoring." So, I decided to do the scary thing and switch late in college. My love for science never died but my quantitative mind told me that I should work in finance.

To confirm my belief, I took an aptitude test, and sure enough I scored high in both math and structural visualization, but scored low in an aptitude called inductive reasoning, which is primarily the skill doctors use to diagnose patients. When I got my recommendation for work, I got three, Finance, Engineering or Architecture. I didn't want to do too much more school at the time, so I chose finance and worked for five years after getting a graduate degree in finance. However, I worked for 5 years and never once felt challenged quantitatively. All the while I was not money hungry the way some of my colleagues were, and unfortunately this is kind of a driving force in many high-level financial services jobs.

So, after working and feeling drawn back to science I decided to pursue a graduate degree in engineering. As I've worked through this degree I feel like I am learning a great deal, am challenged intellectually and drawn back to science all the while itching that math muscle I like to use. Going back to my days as a pre-med student, I don't think science was the issue. I think the subset of science that I chose was too narrow in scope and I did not even entertain the idea that I may enjoy science beyond the field of medicine. As an engineer I plan on going into biomolecular and chemical engineering, which focuses on biological and chemical systems, applying physics to optimize structures like the human body, chemical reactors, nanotechnologies or materials.

The issue was not my love for science or my intellectual curiosity, but rather the narrow scope I put onto myself at a young age and not to try new things when I got into college. If I had just messed around a little more with my coursework in college, I would've figured out that I just like engineering a little more than medicine and would've focused my curriculum accordingly. I had just fixated myself on the idea of being a doctor a little too early and if I had done myself a favor and explored a little more than I would've discovered, without the help of psychometrics, that I do in fact like science, just not the subset I was focusing on. If you're in high school or an underclassman in college take as wide an array of courses that you possibly can.