My first college major was biology. I was determined to become a "scientist", inspired by all the giants I learned about in high school. I immediately found a job working in a lab after getting to college.

However, I quickly become disillusioned about the career prospect. In the textbook, it seems like Mendel had a great idea one day after observation of pea traits. He cultivated some pea plants to test his idea and thus came the genetic theory of inheritance. Boom, home run. Modern biology research takes a lot more effort and churning just to get to a intermediate finding. Obviously I was at the bottom rung with the most menial work but it just did not appeal to me much.

In addition to that, it is very apparent that everyone in the lab is stressed out. The professor is always working on a new grant application; post-docs worried about their future; grad students trying to get their experiment finished and paper out. People come into the lab on weekends all the time. It feels like a grind and very few people seem to have the time to slow down and take delight in their work. I didn't have an idea of how much their respective salary back then but its obviously they are not rich.

I worked on the job for all four years but am very glad I switched my major to CS in my sophomore year.