confused student

[joha_nani]

Hi everyone,

Im currently a full time student and my major is biology. The thing is that i went to a couple of advisors at my University and i dont know why when i asked them about what career they think it will fit me according to my preferences they never give me an concrete answer. This past semester i took immunology and i became obsess with the class( I LOVED IT) and i went to speak to 4 different advisors because my major is biology and i wanted to make sure i was taking the right classes since i know that biology is more general than immunology. The thing is that i wanted to know that if i should change my major to microbiology ( that is more concentrated in microorganisms than biology that is a more general science) or should i stay in biology? Two of the four advisors told me that immunology and microbiology has nothing to do one with another which made me more confuse... I will really appreciate if someone can clarify me more about these 2 sciences since i want to be a researcher someday. I love everything that has to do with cells, viruses, infections etc but i know that biology is more of a general science right?

 

Thank you for your help!!

[CharonY]

Immunology is as a discipline quite different from microbiology.

The latter is dealing (obviously) with microbial ecology and physiology and can be either general (i.e. composition of the biota in soil) or very specific (say, physiology and genetic of a specific bacterium).

Immunology on the other hand deals with general immune systems and responses of a variety of host systems (and the biomedical part usually deals with humans or certain animal models).

 

There is an overlap when it comes to infectious microbes, but even the the immunology is more on the host side (i.e. how is the pathogen detected, what are the host responses), and microbiology deals with it from the pathogen side (how does it avoid host responses, how does it proliferate inside the host).

 

I am not sure what you mean with:

 

biology is more of a general science right?

[chadn737]

1) What do you want to do long term?

 

2) While your major will have a set of core classes, there is almost always flexibility in what you can take....at least in the US. As an undergraduate, my major was Agronomy (crops and soils). However, after my first year, I knew that my passion was in genetics, so I began taking more classes in genetics, biochemistry, etc than was required by my major. I could have switched, but am actually glad I didn't as my major gave me a background in subjects that are important to my career, but which were not required of a genetics major.

 

The point being, that the major itself is not going to set you on a singular path. If you want to go to grad school, then its not going to be that big of a deal if your major was biology or microbiology. Oftentimes several specialized immunology courses are part of the microbiology curriculum...some only at the graduate level. If your school has these, see if you can't take some as an elective. Even as an undergrad, if you are advanced enough, its possible to take graduate level courses. So look into that as well.