Health and Exercise Major

[challer1]

[quote]Bill Roberts wrote:
In these classes though I generally never studied at all – not a lick, other than probably just a single read-through of the book, and that a fast clip – and invariably scored top of class.

This despite the physiology class having over 500 College of Health and Human Performance students in it.

And in discussions with them, they considered the class HARD.

This was, I thought, a sad commentary. As they studied and I did not, at least some of them should have matched or surpassed my test scores, where I missed any.

[/quote]

I experienced this same thing at UMD, which is supposed to be one of the “top programs” in the country.

To help illustrate the situation to any outsiders, I was helping some friends with practice problems the day of our biomechanics final, and as I’m reviewing, one of my friends stopped me to say “I don’t even know what a vector is.” He got a B in the class…

[karlrichii]

it takes an exceptionally focused person to be successful with an exercise science degree. it took me a few years in this major to realize I am not that person. Im going to finish my major for no other reason than the fact that im too old to change it and Ive invested too much time in college to walk away empty, but in all honesty I wish I had majored in something else or stayed in the electrical union.

Id think long and hard about whether you want to enter this field and if you decide to then go full steam ahead and absorb as much knowledge, make as many contacts and train as many people as possible to make yourself a success because the degree aint gonna do it.

[Artemisia]

[quote]Bill Roberts wrote:
I did not major in it, but as my major left a lot of room for electives, I took physiology, exercise physiology, and exercise prescription – the last one or the last two being their top level courses – from the Department of Exercise Science.

The difficulty level and overall caliber of students were jokes.
[/quote]

I missed this when I first read the thread. How true! My nutrition program peers are not the brightest bunch. I’ll admit it; I’m very busy with grad work and rarely make it to my undergrad classes (no attendance) - I read the book, check out the lecture notes, and come in for exams. I have a 4.0 after three semesters. My fellow classmates? Not so much. They study, but everything seems to be much more difficult for them, and there is room to slack off plenty and still keep at least a 3.0. I did not find the same to be true when I was pre-med the first time around and was enrolled in the science courses meant for hard science majors.

For pre-med, I’m certain you have to take a recommended amount of coursework that meets the requirements of most med schools, so it’s not like you won’t be covered if you opt to also take ex sci classes. You might just be driven nuts by your peers.

[system]

[quote]Artemisia wrote:
As a nutrition major (I’m working on my second degree right now) who has a lot of classes with ex sci students, I can tell you the following things from my experience:

1. The nutrition classes you’ll take will generally teach you nothing you don’t already know from a practical application standpoint in terms of healthy eating, fat loss, etc., although in some courses there is biochem that’s helpful and interesting. Medical nutrition will probably be interesting, too, although I’m about 99% sure ex sci doesn’t cover that.

2. The same nutrition classes will drive you insane because if the school has CADE accreditation (most do) it follows ADA guidelines and you’ll get taunted for meal plans that contain more than 1g/kg protein and more than one egg a day. I have one bodybuilder in the program with me, and we commiserate often.

3. Sometimes you can get great instruction. We’re required to take a sports nutrition course now because the ADA supposedly has recently realized that athletes are “different animals” and you can’t tell them to follow MyPyramid (as if anyone should). My instructor for this class is just GREAT. On the first day, she told us that most R.D.s know nothing about nutrition for fitness, and that the field has a very bad reputation among the athletic. My ears perked up and I’ve learned a bunch - we’ve covered things like nutrient timing, and I never would have expected that based on my previous course experience.

The other few things…I started out doing my first degree as a psych major planning on going to med school. I liked psychology; I didn’t want to major in bio/biochem/chem like most pre-med students. Our pre-med honors society got a talk from a big-wig cardiothoracic surgeon from Harvard who majored in English lit when he was in undergrad and told us to do what we loved. There was also an article in either the WSJ or the Times (I don’t recall) a few years back that talked about how if a med school has a choice between two relatively identical students, the humanities/non-traditional major student is likely to win out because he has demonstrated a real passion for his chosen major by going against the norm (and had to do more coursework, too), and also is probably better at dealing with people. My fiance is in med school and his roommate majored in theology. So…do what you want!

As a side note, I find that there is ALWAYS, in any field, a large portion who act as though they know everything, when they’re really “dumbasses.” I’m in grad school for English right now, and there are more than a few who behave the same way a bunch in my nutrition classes do - superiority complexes abound.[/quote]

Thanks for all that. It’s interesting you started as a psych major pre-med as well. It’s funny because even though I KNOW major doesn’t matter it’s always something I have in the back of my mind. That’s cool that you had a professor that actually knew current information for at least the one class, hopefully I’ll have some who are like that as well because, even though it annoys me when people try to act like they know everything about basic topics, that annoys me 10x as much when it’s related to lifting/nutrition.

[quote]karlrichii wrote:
it takes an exceptionally focused person to be successful with an exercise science degree. it took me a few years in this major to realize I am not that person. Im going to finish my major for no other reason than the fact that im too old to change it and Ive invested too much time in college to walk away empty, but in all honesty I wish I had majored in something else or stayed in the electrical union.

Id think long and hard about whether you want to enter this field and if you decide to then go full steam ahead and absorb as much knowledge, make as many contacts and train as many people as possible to make yourself a success because the degree aint gonna do it.[/quote]

Do you mean post-undergrad? If that’s what you’re saying then I definitely know what you mean. Luckily I wouldn’t have to worry about that but if I didn’t have plans to go to med school I don’t know what I would do. If you mean it’s hard to be successful as that major, as in hard to do well, that seems odd.

[quote]Artemisia wrote:

[quote]Bill Roberts wrote:
I did not major in it, but as my major left a lot of room for electives, I took physiology, exercise physiology, and exercise prescription – the last one or the last two being their top level courses – from the Department of Exercise Science.

The difficulty level and overall caliber of students were jokes.
[/quote]

I missed this when I first read the thread. How true! My nutrition program peers are not the brightest bunch. I’ll admit it; I’m very busy with grad work and rarely make it to my undergrad classes (no attendance) - I read the book, check out the lecture notes, and come in for exams. I have a 4.0 after three semesters. My fellow classmates? Not so much. They study, but everything seems to be much more difficult for them, and there is room to slack off plenty and still keep at least a 3.0. I did not find the same to be true when I was pre-med the first time around and was enrolled in the science courses meant for hard science majors.

For pre-med, I’m certain you have to take a recommended amount of coursework that meets the requirements of most med schools, so it’s not like you won’t be covered if you opt to also take ex sci classes. You might just be driven nuts by your peers. ;-)[/quote]

lol I’m glad I can get this perspective from someone who has taken the pre-med route for some time and can compare those classes. I’ve gotten a solid A in all of my pre-med classes so far so hopefully the HES classes will be comparatively easy. I did have to work my ass off to get those A’s but still, at least I got them.

Out of curiosity, you mentioned your grad school classes are harder…what are you going to graduate school for?

[karlrichii]

[quote]pumped340 wrote:

Do you mean post-undergrad? If that’s what you’re saying then I definitely know what you mean. Luckily I wouldn’t have to worry about that but if I didn’t have plans to go to med school I don’t know what I would do. If you mean it’s hard to be successful as that major, as in hard to do well, that seems odd.
[/quote]

nah, i meant post-grad. the undergrad courses are a cake-walk to anyone with half a brain, even me and I am NOT scientifically inclined - I meant the overall training, sports medicine etc. field is super-competitive but since you’re headed to med school you kinda sound like you’ve got your head on straight. good luck guy

[Artemisia]

[quote]pumped340 wrote:

[quote]Artemisia wrote:
As a nutrition major (I’m working on my second degree right now) who has a lot of classes with ex sci students, I can tell you the following things from my experience:

1. The nutrition classes you’ll take will generally teach you nothing you don’t already know from a practical application standpoint in terms of healthy eating, fat loss, etc., although in some courses there is biochem that’s helpful and interesting. Medical nutrition will probably be interesting, too, although I’m about 99% sure ex sci doesn’t cover that.

2. The same nutrition classes will drive you insane because if the school has CADE accreditation (most do) it follows ADA guidelines and you’ll get taunted for meal plans that contain more than 1g/kg protein and more than one egg a day. I have one bodybuilder in the program with me, and we commiserate often.

3. Sometimes you can get great instruction. We’re required to take a sports nutrition course now because the ADA supposedly has recently realized that athletes are “different animals” and you can’t tell them to follow MyPyramid (as if anyone should). My instructor for this class is just GREAT.

On the first day, she told us that most R.D.s know nothing about nutrition for fitness, and that the field has a very bad reputation among the athletic. My ears perked up and I’ve learned a bunch - we’ve covered things like nutrient timing, and I never would have expected that based on my previous course experience.

The other few things…I started out doing my first degree as a psych major planning on going to med school. I liked psychology; I didn’t want to major in bio/biochem/chem like most pre-med students.

Our pre-med honors society got a talk from a big-wig cardiothoracic surgeon from Harvard who majored in English lit when he was in undergrad and told us to do what we loved.

There was also an article in either the WSJ or the Times (I don’t recall) a few years back that talked about how if a med school has a choice between two relatively identical students, the humanities/non-traditional major student is likely to win out because he has demonstrated a real passion for his chosen major by going against the norm (and had to do more coursework, too), and also is probably better at dealing with people. My fiance is in med school and his roommate majored in theology. So…do what you want!

As a side note, I find that there is ALWAYS, in any field, a large portion who act as though they know everything, when they’re really “dumbasses.” I’m in grad school for English right now, and there are more than a few who behave the same way a bunch in my nutrition classes do - superiority complexes abound.[/quote]

Thanks for all that. It’s interesting you started as a psych major pre-med as well. It’s funny because even though I KNOW major doesn’t matter it’s always something I have in the back of my mind.

That’s cool that you had a professor that actually knew current information for at least the one class, hopefully I’ll have some who are like that as well because, even though it annoys me when people try to act like they know everything about basic topics, that annoys me 10x as much when it’s related to lifting/nutrition.

[quote]karlrichii wrote:
it takes an exceptionally focused person to be successful with an exercise science degree. it took me a few years in this major to realize I am not that person. Im going to finish my major for no other reason than the fact that im too old to change it and Ive invested too much time in college to walk away empty, but in all honesty I wish I had majored in something else or stayed in the electrical union.

Id think long and hard about whether you want to enter this field and if you decide to then go full steam ahead and absorb as much knowledge, make as many contacts and train as many people as possible to make yourself a success because the degree aint gonna do it.[/quote]

Do you mean post-undergrad? If that’s what you’re saying then I definitely know what you mean. Luckily I wouldn’t have to worry about that but if I didn’t have plans to go to med school I don’t know what I would do. If you mean it’s hard to be successful as that major, as in hard to do well, that seems odd.

[quote]Artemisia wrote:

[quote]Bill Roberts wrote:
I did not major in it, but as my major left a lot of room for electives, I took physiology, exercise physiology, and exercise prescription – the last one or the last two being their top level courses – from the Department of Exercise Science.

The difficulty level and overall caliber of students were jokes.
[/quote]

I missed this when I first read the thread. How true! My nutrition program peers are not the brightest bunch. I’ll admit it; I’m very busy with grad work and rarely make it to my undergrad classes (no attendance) - I read the book, check out the lecture notes, and come in for exams. I have a 4.0 after three semesters.

My fellow classmates? Not so much. They study, but everything seems to be much more difficult for them, and there is room to slack off plenty and still keep at least a 3.0. I did not find the same to be true when I was pre-med the first time around and was enrolled in the science courses meant for hard science majors.

For pre-med, I’m certain you have to take a recommended amount of coursework that meets the requirements of most med schools, so it’s not like you won’t be covered if you opt to also take ex sci classes. You might just be driven nuts by your peers. ;-)[/quote]

lol I’m glad I can get this perspective from someone who has taken the pre-med route for some time and can compare those classes. I’ve gotten a solid A in all of my pre-med classes so far so hopefully the HES classes will be comparatively easy. I did have to work my ass off to get those A’s but still, at least I got them.

Out of curiosity, you mentioned your grad school classes are harder…what are you going to graduate school for?

[/quote]

Ha ha…English, if you’d believe it. Not necessarily harder (many of my peers are full of bs and coast along just fine), but there’s an IMMENSE amount of reading and writing - I’m talking 1000+ pages/week plus monster-long papers.

Congrats on the 4.0. That is a BIG help on med school apps.

[FrozenNinja]

Took some classes towards the ATHLETIC TRAINING major in college. Really liked it. When you finish a major or minor like that you can get certified and train and work pretty much with any professional athlete or team. Is that would you want?

Seriously its all about what you’ll enjoy doing as a job bro. You don’t want work to be like high school…when you wake up you just DREAD going…its not fun.

[system]

[quote]FrozenNinja wrote:
Took some classes towards the ATHLETIC TRAINING major in college. Really liked it. When you finish a major or minor like that you can get certified and train and work pretty much with any professional athlete or team.

Is that would you want? Seriously its all about what you’ll enjoy doing as a job bro. You don’t want work to be like high school…when you wake up you just DREAD going…its not fun.[/quote]

Well job purposes are definitely not the main reason considering I already have a job planned out.

However as I mentioned I do have an interest in a lot of the health and exercise material and apparently the major is supposed to set us up to be certified personal trainers/strength and conditioning coaches which, although that doesn’t mean much to me, it would be nice to have since people always want some proof of knowledge (being able to tell the average person I’m “certified” v. “I know a lot” lol)

These are the courses I would need as a HES major, some seem pretty cool

HES 160 Health & Wellness Issues
HES 172 Foundations of Health & Exercise Science
HES 203 Anatomy & Physiology
HES 204 Anatomy & Kinesiology OR HES 205 Applied Anat. & Phys*HES 311 Applied Physiology
HES 301 Biomechanics
HES 350 Nutrition and Metabolism
HES 302 Assessment & Eval of Human Performance Research
HES 405 Guidelines for Allied Health Professionals
HES 410 Exercise Physiology And Exercise Prescription
HES 493 Internship
HES 497 Seminar in Hlth & Ex Sci
Elective i.e. HES 450 Physiology of Resistance Training)

[Bill_Roberts]

I do have a suspicion you’ll be disappointed.

Now in my case I was not, because it was not my major, it was only 3 courses, and for two of them while my fellow students were duds, the professor was a fine scientist and educator and I had a number of discussions with him outside of the lectures, and outside of the required material, that I found valuable.

And I was completing my microbiology degree in only 1.5 years (past the AA) rather than the usual 2 years, so the fact that essentially no study was needed was a good thing.

However, as for spending all the time involved above that COULD be spent at more productive things, the thing is, as you’ve done well with actually-difficult courses, you really could get everything you will get out of the above courses by just cruising through the textbooks.

In other words, as a not-time-consuming hobby.

I truly expect you will miss nothing, other than the internship.

[system]

[quote]Bill Roberts wrote:
I do have a suspicion you’ll be disappointed.

Now in my case I was not, because it was not my major, it was only 3 courses, and for two of them while my fellow students were duds, the professor was a fine scientist and educator and I had a number of discussions with him outside of the lectures, and outside of the required material, that I found valuable.

And I was completing my microbiology degree in only 1.5 years (past the AA) rather than the usual 2 years, so the fact that essentially no study was needed was a good thing.

However, as for spending all the time involved above that COULD be spent at more productive things, the thing is, as you’ve done well with actually-difficult courses, you really could get everything you will get out of the above courses by just cruising through the textbooks.

In other words, as a not-time-consuming hobby.

I truly expect you will miss nothing, other than the internship.[/quote]

Hm, I’m glad I’m getting your input on this Bill but I’m a little confused by what you mean. You seem to be saying I’d be wasting my time with these classes, but what other productive things would I be doing?

It’s not like option A is taking no classes and just doing pre-med stuff and option B is spending all my time in these easy classes. Either way I’ll have an equal amount of classes (whether it be psych or HES) since it would be as a major, not a hobby. so I’m not sure why you think these would be a waste of time, or why I would be disappointed. Could you explain a little more?

[AlisaV]

keep in mind it’s less versatile than psych if you don’t make it in the exercise business. Nobody likes to consider that possibility but it’s worth thinking about.

[system]

[quote]AlisaV wrote:
keep in mind it’s less versatile than psych if you don’t make it in the exercise business. Nobody likes to consider that possibility but it’s worth thinking about.[/quote]

I agree but I don’t plan on really using the degree for my job unless I want to be a personal trainer over summers or something

[jehovasfitness]

[quote]pumped340 wrote:

[quote]Xab wrote:
Well, I have some perspective for you, but I need to tell you about me first so it makes sense.

I started out double majoring in Journalism and Public Relations. I had just gotten my NSCA-CPT cert before the fall classes started, and I’m working on my CSCS now. Naturally, taking college courses in biomechanics and kinesiology would make sense since I needed more electives. So, I took Treatment of Athletic Injuries, Anatomy, and Nutrition for Sports.

I’m hoping it’s just my school, but it was a clusterfuck of heavily outdated information.

The nutrition course was Grade A, 100% dietitian bullshit. They were saying shit like recommending no more than 75g of protein, even for very active strength athletes like football players, and advocating low-fat diets for fat loss. The anatomy course was useful (although the teacher didn’t know how to teach) and the treatment course was well-taught, but the textbook and the materials were all at least 10 years old.

Academia usually comes up with theory first, and then it works it’s way into the professional world. It’s backwards with anything related to kinesiology, biomechanics, or exercise physiology though. The shit that guys like Poliquin, Cosgrove, Tate, and Simmons have been saying for years won’t be taught in classrooms for a while, because it’s too much of a departure from the safe norms, which are currently a joke.

All I can say is the piece of paper might be worth it, but be ready for four years of pulling your hair out. [/quote]

lol that’s exactly what I think could be a problem, that will probably piss me off so much with dumbasses thinking they know stuff when it’s all wrong.

That even happened in my bio class yesterday, TWICE. First my teacher tells me that high protein will cause a lot of stress to your kidneys and is dangerous and then goes on to tell how keto diets are very dangerous and causes metabolic acidosis. Not that she’s entirely wrong but the generalized crap and misinformation really got to me. I’m sure that will be 10x worse in some of these classes but hopefully they’re not too outdated.

[quote]challer1 wrote:

I was a kines major and we didn’t learn anything worthwhile, and I took all the “hard” classes in the major. It was a waste of time, I echo the other posters sentiments. It doesn’t matter if you’re taking biomechanics or neural basis of movement, you’re going to be held back since the rest of your class is a bunch of jerk offs that are looking for an easy major and just got stuck in the “hard” class because it was the only thing that would fit in their schedule.

If you’re worried about the difficulty of your current material, consider changing program tracks. If you consider anything you could possibly be doing as an undergrad to be remotely challenging, the MCAT is going to be a bitch.[/quote]

Again this kind of sounds like good news to me. I’m not lazy and I like to learn interesting material but the fact that it seems a lot of you are saying the classes are easy and will go slow for the slower students is one of the reasons I would want to take it. Every semester it’s always been my pre med classes + psych or other classes and every semester the pre med classes have been a lot of work and the other classes are comparatively easy. Considering the pre-med workload I’d be happy to have the rest of my classes but interesting but relatively easy.

[quote]PB Andy wrote:
Agreed that the information you learn will largely be useless. The only thing it is good for is your resume.[/quote]

Is this how you feel about the information you’re currently learning? That it will be useless for what you plan to do after undergrad? I think this would be more of a concern if I didn’t have a plan for after undergrad but I’m sure it couldn’t be much worse than a psych degree, not too much you can do with that. At least with this I could get some certifications if I ever wanted to be a PT over summers of med school or something which would be cool.

It seems like you guys are just saying that it would be relatively easy and if anything maybe irrelevant right? Doesn’t seem like there are other downsides, not that have been mentioned anyway.

[quote]jehovasfitness wrote:
I graduated with an Exercise Science degree.

I was an accounting major for 2.5 yrs, then switched and loved every minute of it.

Never missed a class and this is coming from someone all through school would miss the max amount of days allowed, and into college got a little better but still would miss classes and not enjoy going.

Never regret making that decision except for the student loans :D[/quote]

And you’re a PT now right? How were the classes you had to take as far as difficultly and interest (well I guess you were clearly interested given what you said).

Was the information outdated and annoying to listen to or actually up to date?[/quote]

the classes were easy for me because I already had done a lot of studying on my own and I was passionate about the material.

It wasn’t really out of date anatomy/physiology is pretty standard, some of the other classes seemed like more of a joke, but I was able to take away a few things from whatever class it was.
How much it helped me in the end? I’d have to be honest and say I don’t feel it was worth doing the major for since I had a pretty good understanding already, and one could really educate themself a lot quicker than a 4 yr plan. But, it can give you an edge in the work force if you want to do something besides just a PT, as in management in the fitness industry etc.

[Bill_Roberts]

[quote]pumped340 wrote:

[quote]Bill Roberts wrote:
I do have a suspicion you’ll be disappointed.

Now in my case I was not, because it was not my major, it was only 3 courses, and for two of them while my fellow students were duds, the professor was a fine scientist and educator and I had a number of discussions with him outside of the lectures, and outside of the required material, that I found valuable.

And I was completing my microbiology degree in only 1.5 years (past the AA) rather than the usual 2 years, so the fact that essentially no study was needed was a good thing.

However, as for spending all the time involved above that COULD be spent at more productive things, the thing is, as you’ve done well with actually-difficult courses, you really could get everything you will get out of the above courses by just cruising through the textbooks.

In other words, as a not-time-consuming hobby.

I truly expect you will miss nothing, other than the internship.[/quote]

Hm, I’m glad I’m getting your input on this Bill but I’m a little confused by what you mean. You seem to be saying I’d be wasting my time with these classes, but what other productive things would I be doing? [/quote]

Flipping through the course catalog will likely reveal classes and a program that interest you and where things will be learned beyond what you could easily do yourself as a hobby, which I expect is the case with the courses listed above (except for the internship.)

What I mean by waste of time is that for things you could absolutely (IMO) pick up equally well yourself by just cruising through the textbooks, you don’t need to pay tuition and haul yourself to all these classes and as a result NOT take other things where you really would be learning things that you probably would not ever pick up on your own.

[system]

[quote]jehovasfitness wrote:

[quote]pumped340 wrote:

[quote]jehovasfitness wrote:
I graduated with an Exercise Science degree.

I was an accounting major for 2.5 yrs, then switched and loved every minute of it.

Never missed a class and this is coming from someone all through school would miss the max amount of days allowed, and into college got a little better but still would miss classes and not enjoy going.

Never regret making that decision except for the student loans :D[/quote]

And you’re a PT now right? How were the classes you had to take as far as difficultly and interest (well I guess you were clearly interested given what you said).

Was the information outdated and annoying to listen to or actually up to date?[/quote]

the classes were easy for me because I already had done a lot of studying on my own and I was passionate about the material.

It wasn’t really out of date anatomy/physiology is pretty standard, some of the other classes seemed like more of a joke, but I was able to take away a few things from whatever class it was.
How much it helped me in the end? I’d have to be honest and say I don’t feel it was worth doing the major for since I had a pretty good understanding already, and one could really educate themself a lot quicker than a 4 yr plan. But, it can give you an edge in the work force if you want to do something besides just a PT, as in management in the fitness industry etc.[/quote]

Well for the out of date stuff I mainly meant the nutrition/health information (like saying low protein and really high carbs for instance).

Some of the classes seemed like a joke, you mean in how easy they were?

A few people have mentioned how it might not be worth the major and I guess what I’ve forgotten is that a lot of people (most) choose a major in order to help them for a future job. For me, how useful the major is really doesn’t matter at all for a future job since in my case the actual major doesn’t matter, so I’d just be looking for the most interesting one that wasn’t unnecessarily hard.

[quote]Bill Roberts wrote:

[quote]pumped340 wrote:

Hm, I’m glad I’m getting your input on this Bill but I’m a little confused by what you mean. You seem to be saying I’d be wasting my time with these classes, but what other productive things would I be doing? [/quote]

Flipping through the course catalog will likely reveal classes and a program that interest you and where things will be learned beyond what you could easily do yourself as a hobby, which I expect is the case with the courses listed above (except for the internship.)

What I mean by waste of time is that for things you could absolutely (IMO) pick up equally well yourself by just cruising through the textbooks, you don’t need to pay tuition and haul yourself to all these classes and as a result NOT take other things where you really would be learning things that you probably would not ever pick up on your own.[/quote]

Oh OK I get what you’re saying. I think it’s a good point but almost nullified by the whole pre-med thing. I’m not trying to sound one sided here at all, as the last thing I would want to do is to switch majors preemptively and be disappointed, so I’m trying to get enough information first. I do have some concerns (like if an acceptance board would look at it as “taking it easy”) but regarding you’re point it just seems like that aspect doesn’t matter because 1. regardless of my choice of major it won’t be a factor in going to med school and 2. I will definitely be working hard and learning a lot that I will need through all of my pre med requirements (chem 1&2, Physics 1&2, Organic chem 1&2, Genetics, Calculus…)

[Bill_Roberts]

Well, it seems to me that dismissing your undergraduate education as being unimportant to you except for completing the pre-med classes and doing well in them, and being awarded a degree of some kind – any kind – may be a shortsighted view.

But if you really couldn’t care less if you, at the same financial cost, cost of time, etc. wind up learning quite a lot that you’d likely never pick up on your own and likely will never have the chance to learn again, but would rather just take some meathead courses then that is a personal decision, to be sure.

You know, I went to UF with the idea of going to medical school and took all the pre-med courses. I decided not to go to medical school because I had no willingness to put up with the conditions of internship and residency and knew I would not do well with HMO’s and the government telling me what I can and can’t do to treat my patients.

Instead, as a consequence of using my electives for things I considered valuable, I wound up going into medicinal chemistry.

I did not even know what medicinal chemistry was when enrolling at UF.

Just as an example.

[Bill_Roberts]

Though to be clear: my major was microbiology, which had a lot of required chemistry courses, and thus both the major and my choice of electives were useful. Except really for exercise science electives

They were just a vacation really. Nine credits being a vacation is one thing. It’s another decision, but surely one you can make if it suits you, to decide to make the major a vacation.

[system]

I definitely get what you’re saying Bill, thanks for taking to time to write everything out. I guess for me that’s just not an objection at all. The best analogy I can think of is how poor kids apparently would have loved to go to school many years ago and it would have been an opportunity whereas now most kids hate school. For most, maybe undergrad would be a time to learn a bunch of information you wouldn’t have another chance to learn, or a chance to find out what interests you. But for me, already knowing what I want to do and having been “forced” and will be continually “forced” to learn so much information, I really couldn’t care less about learning even more than everything I’ll have to learn here for pre-med and then all I’ll learn in med/dental school.

Right now nearly 100% of my time goes towards sleeping, eating, working out, and above all, classes and studying. Within studying/classes about 90% of that (literally) is going towards my 2 current pre-med classes, a “vacation” for my other classes sounds perfect lol (although as of now I’ve done almost nothing for my psych class, so it’s not like non pre-med classes could get much easier for the time being, I just also think that exercise/nutrition is much more interesting than learning how to write papers in APA style and perform research).

[quote]Bill Roberts wrote:

You know, I went to UF with the idea of going to medical school and took all the pre-med courses. I decided not to go to medical school because I had no willingness to put up with the conditions of internship and residency and knew I would not do well with HMO’s and the government telling me what I can and can’t do to treat my patients.
[/quote]

Hench my decision to go into dentistry …short/no residency, way lower malpractice insurance, easier to open my own practice, etc…

[Bill_Roberts]

Makes sense!

[buffalokilla]

[quote]pumped340 wrote:
Hench my decision to go into dentistry …short/no residency, way lower malpractice insurance, easier to open my own practice, etc…[/quote]

Looks like you’ll be dealing with fewer PTs than I’d anticipated!

Good luck, enjoy the ride that is college.