6 Ways To Turn Your Passion for STEM Into An Exciting Career

If you gravitated toward science and math classes in high school or college, I can’t relate to you — any of my math teachers over the course of my education would vouch for this. When it came to subjects like English, I excelled without thinking too much about it. A career path geared toward some kind of writing seemed obvious, mainly because I wasn’t interested in anything that required more than basic arithmetic.

While that whole writing thing mercifully panned out for me (here you are, reading something I’ve written!), there’s a part of me that wishes I’d known just how many genuinely cool careers were even peripherally related to the STEM — that is, science, technology, engineering, and math — fields. I can’t go back in time and convince 17-year-old me to just care a little bit more about biochemistry, but I can highlight 6 ways to turn your STEM passions into an enviable career.

Make use of your interpersonal skills

Love science? Love understanding what makes people tick? STEM doesn't have to only be about hard facts and numbers. Leverage your natural emotional intelligence and apply it to the field of psychology. Industrial psychologists apply psychological theories to the workplace by helping to increase productivity, improve the quality of an organization, and counseling employees when it comes to work-related problems.

Get your defenses up (in a good way)

If you love shows and movies about hacking and cyber-security, then you’ll probably love the idea of becoming the real thing. Information security analysts get paid to protect a company’s computer systems and networks from things like cyber attacks and data breaches.

Put your coding knowledge to work

Web developers make the most of the whole left brain/right brain dynamic — they bring websites to life by making sure all the components of the site come together in a way that looks good and is easily navigated by users. That includes working on everything from images and special effects to navigation and writing code (and more).

Stick to the numbers

If you nerd out over famous statisticians and like playing with numbers, the field of actuarial science combines statistics, math, and financial theory to measure (and prevent) financial risk and uncertainty in many industries.

Think outside the box

Do you have a penchant for solving problems with innovative thinking? Have strong analytical skills? Software developers get paid to help design the features we’ve all become obsessed with and use every day — think everything from social media to mobile banking (and everything in between). The best part? Software developers are increasingly in demand across of ton of different industries, so aligning your passions with your career would be the rule, not the exception.

Game your way to the top

If you’re obsessed with video games, then degrees in computer science or engineering could lead you to every gamer’s dream job: creating virtual worlds from the ground up.