DOUBT

When in doubt, tell the truth. -- Mark Twain

Sometimes I wonder why I do what I do.

My plan for my life is to go to university, study mechanical engineering, have a stepping-stone engineering job that I'm not necessarily thrilled about, and then go work for NASA or something. This is all fine and good because I love math and am awesome at math, and I really like physics and I'm pretty good at it, too.

But today in physics class, we talked about chemistry. Now, I used to like chemistry. In grade school, when we were talking about all the molecular-level stuff. That was cool. But I had a really crappy chemistry teacher in high school, so 1) I know nothing useful about chemistry and 2) I don't like it. Generally when I don't like things, it's because I'm bad at them, but in this case it's simply because I was never taught it. And I'm expected to know these things because I got an A in honors chemistry two years ago because I know how to take tests. It made me reconsider. Do I really want to spend my whole life doing science? If I'm going to be an engineer, I'm going to have to take a ton of science courses in university. The only science class I've ever liked is physics. The only science classes where I've ever learned anything have been physics and biology, and biology won't be useful as a mechanical engineer. Do I want to do this?

But I don't want to talk myself out of engineering before I've truly tried it. The most I should let my doubt do is caution me to keep an open mind. I would do that anyway, though. All doubt does in this case is make me uncertain. It makes me nervous. I don't want to be stuck doing something I hate. I know I could always go back to school and do something else, but I don't want to be in school forever.

I don't want a desk job, either. And I don't want to be a teacher.

What's left?