Informational Interview Report: Environmental Science Major

[Thanks to JW for sharing her informational interview about the environmental science major.]

After taking a couple of comprehensive, career-related assessments, I recently narrowed my choice of a major to either psychology or environmental science.

After more thinking, I have decided that I would like to try to double major in the two subjects. Since I had already begun my psychology minor at my previous university, I wanted to learn more about environmental science.

Luckily, I found out that a fellow teammate who I practice with is a grad student at Stanford University and is an environmental science major. While driving to a race one weekend, I ended up in the same carpool as her and took the opportunity to ask her a couple of questions about her major.

One of the first questions that I asked was whether or not she liked her major, and she replied saying that she found it to be very interesting and exciting. Some advice she gave me were to definitely keep up in class, and that a strong background in science was very important.

When asked about whether there were any specific majors or minors that were recommended to go along with the main major, she told me that since she took so many bio classes in order to fulfill her science credits, she decided to minor in biology. She said that the extra biology classes she took came in handy in grad school.




When asked about what experience is necessary to enter the field, she said that the main thing one needed was an interest in the subject, and with that came the necessary drive to gain more experience in the field. She said the thing that she disliked about being in grad school was the lack of sleep.

When asked about what was unique about an environmental science major, she said that it was interesting to be able to work both indoors and outdoors, and she enjoyed educating people about how to reduce one’s carbon footprint.

In the future, she said, she hoped to become a professor in environmental science, but she wanted to take a year off to explore some different career options. She also wanted to work in the environmental science field for a while in order to become a better professor. She hoped to work somewhere in California around the wetlands.

She told me that the current job market in environmental science is on the rise due to the deteriorating health of our planet’s ecosystem.

She told me that in the spring she was going to be teaching a weekend course and that I was welcome to sit in and then afterwards meet some of the professors she was working with.

Reflection

The interview helped out a lot. I feel that being able to talk to someone that had experience was really insightful. I am looking to take some environmental science classes next term. The overall experience was really nice, not only did I find out more about what I may want to do in the future, I also got to know a teammate better. If I had time to do it differently, I would have asked her if I could meet her in her office to conduct the interview iand maybe ask for a tour around the building and the campus.

Thank You Message

[I included a gift card for coffee.]

Thank you so much for letting me ask you all those questions, look forward to going to your class. See you at practice – bright and early!