I was reading Penelope Trunk's Brazen Careerist blog Seven reasons why graduate school is outdated and got to thinking about my own experience in selecting my undergrad major. Penelope often appears to take extreme positions when she writes but there is usually a fair amount of truth in her work and it's always entertaining. And if you think her blog is outrageous, check her out on Twitter!

I've noticed that when people write their autobiographies that their story about their life, and how they became successful, is often just a story about what they say happened rather than what really happened. It's rare that people acknowledge that luck, or being at the right place at the right time, had a lot to do with their success. Sometimes people are humble and acknowledge that surrounding themselves with people much smarter than themselves made the difference. Whatever the truth actually is, most of what people write or say in interviews is highly sanitized.

Steve Levy called me in response to my recent blog We Need Your Help if You Know about Placing Software Engineers in which I wrote about our daughter's inquiry about what to major in for a software engineering career. He also wrote an interesting comment to that post where he said, "Above all, I've hired people as developers with the same range of degrees as found in a college catalog."

So what follows is my best attempt to document how I ended up with an honors degree in science with a major in physical geography. Remember that it's my story about what happened. My promise to you is that it is as accurate as I can make it and that it is completely unsanitized.

I was a good student in high school back in Sydney, Australia. I was smart enough to get good grades but not motivated enough to work really hard to truly excel. I did well in the college entrance exam and had lots of choices that I could make. The problem was that I had absolutely no idea what I wanted to do. I did know what I didn't want to do (medicine, dentistry, law, architecture, etc.). So I found myself in a car with my two best buddies who had both done extensive research into the best thing to major in. And that thing was chemical engineering. I didn't have a clue what a chemical engineer actually did but my buddies explained that I could always change to something else later and that most of the first year's courses would be transferable too. So I signed up for that.

My first 2 years at college were mostly fun. I studied math, organic and inorganic chemistry, drafting, physics, and some engineering courses that I can no longer remember. My school required students to take one general studies course each semester. I do remember those courses: Philosophy of Religion, Existentialism, Philosophy of Science, China: Since the Revolution, and Women and Work: The Australian Experience. Some of it was fun and the engineering courses were mostly boring. One day I was looking through some pictures of the recent chemical engineering grads and noticed that they all looked like dorks and that I couldn't picture myself being part of that group. So I determined to change my major.

So now what? I figured that I needed to graduate in something but I still didn't know what. So I fell back on the classic advice: do something that you love. I had always loved geography at school and investigated a transfer to the School of Geography. I had little idea what people with a science degree in geography did, but it sounded like fun. And it was! The next couple of years flew buy. I studied climatology, soil science, arid zone geomorphology (landforms), and other similar things. My grades where good and I was invited to do an extra year of study by the head of school and ended up with a B.Sc. (Honours). That looks funny to me now but that's the Australian degree. It's basically a 4 year B.S. majoring in geography. My professor wanted me to continue in the master's program but I was eager to move on.

So I'd graduated with a degree having changed my major once and still had absolutely no idea what I wanted to do with my life. I was in the perfect place to try some things, to investigate, and to live my life.

And whatever happened to my two buddies? One switched to medicine. He's had several different careers in medicine, the latest being psychiatry. The other buddy completed his chemical engineering degree and went to work for Shell Oil. He no longer works there.