next 5 years in 5 steps | Explore Program for Undeclared Students

I too started off where you are now, undeclared. I had no idea what was out there, what I was good at, and what I wanted to do for the rest of my life. Given my Type A personality, the one thing I knew coming into the Explore Program was that I wanted to figure it all out ASAP.

Going from a student to now being a student leader for the past 4 years, I like to think I’ve learned a lot. Based on my own experiences I’ve compiled a list of some tips and tricks, ultimately presenting to you my 5 “theoretically” easy steps to mapping out your next 5 years:

Attend as many Explore Program Events and talk to as many people (advisors, teachers, students, career services, adults, etc.) as possible.

During my first semester, I was considering basically every major from computer science to business to engineering to healthcare, attending almost every exploratory event possible. I also spoke to students in these respective majors, career services, and even my advisor multiple times.

Map out several plans based on your interests and what you are considering.

Based on what I had learned from talking to a variety of people, I had narrowed my choices down to different majors in the Bouve College of Health Science, as well as the pre-med track through biology. With excel, I laid out various 4 to 5 year plans with the classes necessary to take each semester.

Talk to more people.

I continued talking to more people, especially students and advisors in all the majors I had narrowed down my choices to.

Pick a plan.

I settled on physical therapy, and was excited and ready to begin taking the classes necessary to fulfill that major. I had mapped out the next 5.5 years of my life in this doctorate program, and signed up for my classes the following semester as a soon to be physical therapy major.

Stick to it.

That winter break I returned home, excited to shadow a physical therapist that my dad had set up for me. I spent 2 entire days shadowing her and felt a pit in my stomach grow. I realized I was not as sold on the major as I had thought.

I returned to Northeastern for the spring semester feeling lost. What was I going to do now? Based on my plan I should already be settled in a major. Not wanting to give up, I brushed myself off and convinced myself that as long as I figured it out by the end of my 1^st year, everything would be okay. So here we go again:

Attend as many Explore Program Events and talk to as many people (advisors, teachers, students, career services, adults, etc.) as possible.

I like to consider it a “stroke of luck”: I tore my ACL and MCL that February during a skiing trip. Because of this, I got to see a wide variety of fields within healthcare first hand. I had appointments with my doctor, was seen by nurses, and even had to go to physical therapy.

Map out several plans based on your interests and what you are considering.

I had at that point narrowed my choices down to nursing and medicine, planning out what courses I would need to take for each.

Talk to more people.

I met with my advisor a few more times and had an informational interview with a doctor and nurse my family knew.

Pick a plan.

Based on all this, I decided that nursing was the right route for me, and sent in the paperwork at the end of my 1^st year to declare nursing.

Stick to it.

That summer, I was accepted into the program and spent my free time volunteering in the hospital. At the very end of the summer, I was able to shadow a nurse and see what she actually spent her shift doing. Once again, I realized I was not ready to commit to nursing, and spent the entirety of the plane ride back to school contemplating what I wanted to do.

I realized that I didn’t necessarily need to know what I was going to do for the rest of my life, and came back to declare a biology major with the hopes of giving myself the time to work it all out. I spent my co-ops trying to figure out exactly what I wanted to do following graduation, repeating the process again:

Attend as many Explore Program Events and talk to as many people (advisors, teachers, students, career services, adults, etc.) as possible.

I completed my first co-op at Tufts Medical Center doing clinical research in Rheumatology, showing me that I really enjoyed the hospital setting.

Map out several plans based on your interests and what you are considering.

Now I was debating between becoming a nurse practitioner vs. physician assistant vs. doctor. I mapped out a plan for each of these paths, deciding that no matter which one I ended up going down, I wanted to finish in 5 years and go straight into one of these training programs.

Talk to more people.

During my second co-op at Boston Healthcare for Women in an OBGYN’s office, I surprisingly loved what the doctor I worked with was doing, and was convinced that I wanted to pursue medical school.

Pick a plan.

So there was my plan, to take the MCAT, apply to medical school, and attempt to go straight in after finishing up at Northeastern.

Stick to it.

I’m sure you are noticing a theme by now, and not surprisingly this is no longer my plan. The MCAT is a stressful test, and applying to matriculate straight in is a tricky thing.

So here I am, planning on at least 1 gap year and questioning medical school to some degree. After all the planning I had done throughout my college career, I am still unsure what my next 5 years are going to look like. The moral of the story is, I’m not sure if you will ever really know exactly what comes next and as hard as you plan, things don’t always work out the way you expected them to. Take my word for it, I definitely did not think I’d end up where I am, about to graduate in the spring, unsure in what I will pursue for my gap year or even if I will end up going to medical school altogether. But, if being undeclared has taught me anything, it is that everything will work itself out in the end. Sometimes you need to cut yourself some slack and take it one step at a time.

By: Eryn Nakashima

Originally Published on: March 27, 2018