u/Vel0ciraptorrrrrrr

Incoming second-year here with a 3.69 GPA I will have to raise. I've accepted that I will probably need a masters or some other kind of further education to get a decent job somewhat related to my degree, and after ruling out teaching I've arrived at the second English major career which is law. I actually vehemently opposed that direction for years when I was terribly socially awkward, but I'm not like that anymore, and I've become a lot more open to people focused jobs. The law is everywhere, so being able to understand it and give the information others need to make a difference in their lives is a pretty important task. It's also the only way I can justify adding a philosophy minor to my already non career specific degree.

Law school and the LSAT honestly sound kind of fun and not too far off from what I already study. It's the kind of challenge where you can rightfully feel proud of yourself for completing it.

Reading 100+ pages a day? I already do that, though I find legal documents boring so uhhh

Writing long essays? I already do that, and I've been told pretty well.

Cold calls during lectures? Shouldn't be a problem if you do the readings, and wouldn't it be like a really big tutorial or seminar-style class, which I've already done?

Mandatory oral debate and moot court (at least for Jackman law)? Ok that's actually kinda hard for me lmfao

The problem is that the job itself has a terrible work-life balance in the top law firms plus the tuition which is crazy expensive. Everyone I hear online is like "don't go to law school unless you are 100% sure about becoming a lawyer, but how many people who end up at the top schools are actually 100% sure about their career goals? There are certainly some people out there who have wanted to be lawyers their entire lives, and I don't fall into that group at all. Should I do a philosophy minor anyways with the goal of law school so that even if I don't go into law I'll have a high GPA and good extracurricular profile for other grad school programs?

I heard that the minor in applied data science is a good opportunity for people in humanities programs (i'm considering doing a double major in English and Cognitive Science in the Thinking and Reasoning stream, the minor has a decent amount of overlap with the rest of my degree) and can be a good addition for research opportunities. I didn't do calculus in high school, but I've recently become interested in logic and philosophy, which has a surprising amount of overlap with math and since my degree is already super interdiciplinary I might as well try and explore STEM a little.

Thing is, when it comes to career goals, I don't really have a single career in mind. I'm open to doing grad school and if I get super desperate, I'll just do a certificate in project management or something. The stats/compsci market is super oversaturated, and these are people with entire Bachelor's degrees in compsci fighting over the few jobs that there are. So are there actually any jobs that an ADS minor would unlock that just doing my double-major wouldn't?

So I'm considering doing a English specialist (maybe a major), a major in cognitive science, and a minor in applied data science, a total of 22 FCE. I only have 16 FCE left, and 1.0 FCE done in English during first-year that would actually apply for my program (the rest were VIC, HIS, and POL). There is 1.5 FCE of overlap accross the three programs (ENG286,CSC108,PSY201), and double counting, that leaves 19 FCE in my program, so 3 FCE of summer school. I also didn't take PSY in first year or summer school so my timetable is actually cooked with a minimum of 1.5 first year classes in second year, plus when I looked at PSY100 and the mandatory 200 level ENG courses a month ago in timetablebuilder, they always overlapped in some way, so uhhhh what do I do to graduate on time? There's 0 FCE needed if I only do a major in English, but that's the last resort.

Is there a way to contact the registrar and have applicable courses counted for a program even if they aren't in the official curriculum?

So I came to a realization a few days ago that I am currently in no position mentally to be a high school teacher and this absolutely fucking wrecked me. It made think about what the hell to do another program in alongside an English major now that Education and Society is off the table, and I am now very curious about cognitive science as a way to understand how the brain works (partially to improve myself) and to become better at thinking through the philosophy courses, plus there's some psych if I ever change my mind and decide to be a social science teacher. If anyone is in cognisci, would you recommend the program? I haven't done any courses in PSY,LIN,CSC, or PHL, so I'm a bit intimidated at COG250. Would this be a difficult class for someone without a background in cognitive science?

I had a revelation a few days ago that I am currently in no position mentally to be a high school teacher and it absolutely fucking wrecked me. It's made me look into the cognitive science major in either the thinking and reasoning or the cognition and the brain streams. I like that it's interdisciplinary and has a lot of different disciplines in one major and there's enough psych to make me eligible for education or anything else behavioral on the graduate degree/certificate level. I'm interested in thinking and reasoning because I want to become better at thinking and understand the world better, which the philosophy heavy course load will enable. I also have a passing interest in biology and science which the cognition and the brain stream provides, I'm quite bad at math though and will have to relearn it starting from grade 9 for either one. If there's anyone in cognisci that can offer advice, I'd really appreciate it.