Biophysics and Careers

Oh what a joy it is to be the kind of person who doesn't know from a young age what they love and want to do for the rest of their lives.

Plenty of people I know seem to have it all figured out, maybe they fell in love with one of their parents' careers, or got lucky and met someone who offered them a job shadow for a few days and they ended up liking it, or they just woke up one day knowing that xyz was what they wanted to dedicate their career to. I, on the other hand, belong to the fun group of people who sort of figure it out as they go because they just never had that "aha" moment.

I'll spare y'all the lead-up to how I narrowed it down to entering the faculty of sciences at UBC, and I've already talked about why I switched from astrophysics to biophysics. But entering my third year now, I'm starting to think about what I want to do after my B.Sc. because I need to start thinking about what I want to write my fourth year thesis on and that should (hopefully) be related to whatever I want to apply to for grad school.

Generally speaking, M.Sc.'s take 1-2 years and Ph.D.'s take 3-5 years, depending on what program you're in and what research you're focusing on. Most options I'm looking at are about 2 and 4 years respectively, so that ends up adding to 10 total years of education beyond high school. It's a large time and monetary commitment, so as you can imagine, I want to be somewhat certain about what exactly I want to study.

My main two (vague) aspects I definitely want in my field of work are some kind of tangible, semi-immediate impact (think surgery, construction, counselling, etc) and using analytic and mathematical thinking (research in the physical sciences, data science, aerospace engineering, etc). Plus I do want to make a livable salary eventually, so I don't want to end up in a career where the highest salary I'll ever reach is 30kCAD a year (we're talking about someone who wants to live in Vancouver or a decent European city here). 

Lately the field that's been catching my eye the most is pharmaceutical sciences. If I go into research and work my way up, I'll eventually be working on something relevant, and which could improve people's quality of life. I also have a good chance of making a decent salary, and as with any research fields, I'll definitely have to apply critical thinking and analyze data. Sounds like a happy middle-ground. Biophysics is also a great B.Sc. to have as entry into pharmaceutical sciences, so I should be set, and my options are still wide open for things like medical physics or med school (but let's be real, I don't think I have the mental capacity to attend school for way more than another decade). 

Moral of the story, if you're not sure what you want to do with the rest of your life, it's okay, you're not the only one.