i was, at one point, actually considering studying biology, but i decided i didn't like the lab work. i mean, there's a disconnect between doing biology in high school - which is a written, academic discipline - and doing biology in the real world, which is very kinetic and hands-on. i have difficulty with kinetic learning, i'm very bad with my hands and i just didn't enjoy actually doing the science.
the other thing about labs is that it required team work, and actually spending time with other people. i simply wasn't able to deal with that, and i should have seen that as a red flag at the time. if i can't handle working in groups to do a lab report, it suggests i have some serious social problems, doesn't it? it suggests that i'm going to have problems doing much of anything.
years later, i found myself up against a brick wall in the computer science program at the same school. i was at 19/20 credits with an A+ gpa to finish a second degree, but i had to get through a groupwork course. and, in hindsight, this was a programming degree, and that is the reality of doing computer science in the actual real world - you have no choice but to work in teams, it's just how the corporate world is designed. i was pissed off about it at the time, but i get it - you can't graduate programming majors that can't function socially, they're useless. i tried three times, was unable to work with the people around me each time and eventually had to give up. to this day, i have 19/20 credits in the computer science program (this is a second degree. i have a previous formal math degree and the diploma and everything.) and don't expect i'll ever be able to handle the groupwork. so, that dead end is what it is.
so, after i backed off the labs, i ended up as a physics student for a while hoping that i could eke out an existence in math-physics, but more or less ended up with the same problem i had with bio - you can't actually get through a physics degree by just doing math, you have to do the labs, and you have to work with people.
math was the only way out from being forced to spend time with other people, and it's the actual reason i ended up with a degree in math, rather than science.
but, i figured something out in the process of stumbling through this.
- psychology is applied biology
- biology is applied chemistry
- chemistry is applied physics
- physics is applied math
so, when you start with math, everything else is just applied - even if you don't like doing the applications.