Need advice: Switching major to Earth Sciences from English

[gibguitar]

I'm in need of some advice.

I'm currently at York U taking English. I was thinking about becoming a high school teacher.

Looking at the future of the teaching job market in Ontario, I've been considering perhaps changing my major.

I've kind of been selling myself short, ever since high school. I would always just take the easiest classes possible, underestimating myself. I've been taking a Natural Science course and I've been enjoying it. I was considering switching to Earth Sciences or Geomatics Engineering and getting into the mining or petroleum industry where there's a future and a lot of money to be made in Canada. An English degree isn't really anything to fallback on if I can't get a teaching job, and I think getting a sciences degree is the way to go in general, even though I hate mathematics.

Anyways, I need high school physics, chemistry, advanced functions and calculus to meet admission requirements for the switch. I think I'm going to do these 4 courses in the background with ILC.org as I continue doing my English degree. Once I complete them, I'll request a major change... and hopefully the change is processed and I start my new major next year, right?

Do these credits I complete this year carry over to my new major?
Does anybody have experience with switching majors?
Has anybody had a similar experience?
Success switching their major even with different admission requirements?
Anybody take Earth Sciences or Geomatics Engineering at York? Maybe even Geology at another university?
Thoughts? How much of it is smarts vs. effort?

[GeoEngg]

Hey, I transferred from computer science to Geomatics Engineering. I guess you will get some gen ed credits and the courses will be taken into account for overall GPA
if you need anyother help, let me know. I will be going to third year of Geomatics Engineering, this fall

[thunderchunky]

First off, you really need to speak to an academic advisor in the department to which you want to transfer.

Couldn't you get your math and pure science requirements met with university courses instead of going through ILC? For example, you could take calculus as an "elective" within your English program. Once you have the base classes done at the uni level, you switch from there. I bet you can get a bunch of your completed credits to count towards your new major.

[fuzzy_avocado]

Fellow English Major,

You need to find out how stringent your school is about you having completed prereq high school courses for 1st year science courses. Take me for example who avoided sciences like the plague in high school, yet in my 3rd year I decided to take a 1st year Biology course and had no problem with enrolling into it despite not having the prerequisites. Even better, I decided to adopt enviro biology as a minor and also had no qualms (I switched out later on).

Now, are you taking ILC high school courses to better prepare yourself for the uni science courses, or just to satisfy the school's prereq requirements for taking these uni science courses? If you think you'll be fine in sciences without prepping for them, I suggest you get out of your ILC courses and start taking science courses. A lot of people think that you're stuck with the major you choose, however you can modify this as you go along.

If you really don't think English is for you (traitor! :P), I say STOP taking any additional English-related courses and make the change sooner rather than later. You also have to consider this state of confusion may have an influence on your grades, so proceed with clarity on what it is you definitely want to do. That's number one.

As for English degrees, I agree that they appear to be useless, but ONLY because there's a high saturation of a lot of people doing English degrees here and other meaningless programs like philosophy or political science. I've got a couple friends who were English majors and they teach English overseas earning very handsome salaries.

On the plus side, as an English major you will most likely do very well on the writing components in your science classes. :)