I have been accepted into a master's program and I'd be happy if I wasn't doubting my life decisions.
Right now I'm on my last year of my bachelors and doing a project - thesis like but instead of 30ects it's 15ects (although I'm doing 30ects off the books). It's in organometallic synthesis and I started working in this field 2 years ago due to an internship.
However I'm battling the fact that I'm supposed to specialise in a small field of chemistry when I enjoy every field of it. I aced both my org classes and pchem. I also know that I want to pursue research and a PhD for the love of the game.
The thing is, I had this course in electrochemistry and had a project in which I had to find a method to purify waste water from olive oil production and I loved the whole thing of testing hypotheses and developing theories (with math ofc) to justify and predict my results.
After this project I realised that I love too much pchem and quantum mechanics to just be a chemist who solely synthesis, but on the other hand I don't want my lab to be a computer room.
I have no idea what to do now. So far in my project the only thing I have enjoyed was the synthesis of the nanoparticles and only because i kept failing and kept testing ideas till I found the answer (so far haven't seen in the literature the reaction I did in my exact conditions).
I'm thinking of following mechanistical studies, as I see it's the only thing that combines my passion for synthesis and my love for thermo and quantum.
However, on the other hand, I want my research to have an actual impact, I refuse to research stuff for industry to just make some rich guy richer. Either my science goes for the scientific community or to society as a whole.
I'd love to know how hard it was to choose the field of specialization, and also some opinions and help :)