The Future/After High School

When I leave high school, I would love to go to college preferably in California studying neuroscience and psychology. I have always been interested in the brain and the mind, so these majors would be perfectly suitable for those topics.

The most relevant career involving both majors is being a neuropsychologist or a cognitive neuroscientist. These doctors study the brain on a cognitive level. Their main job is to conduct research and study why and how humans behave and think the way they do. They use both neuroscience and psychological knowledge to understand how actions and behavior are controlled by neural activity and functions. Neuropsychologists must earn a bachelor's degree (4 years of school), a master's degree (2 more years) and a doctoral degree - either a PhD or PsyD (2-4 more years). The median salary of a neuropsychologist in the United States is $94,100. Starting salaries are $77,500-$80,700. As the years go on, those with over 25 years of experience have a median salary of $185,200. With this job, one must be very committed and interested in what he or she does. She has to be willing to put in a lot of time and effort to learning new things and staying positive. She must be responsible, reliable, efficient, and a hard worker.

The second career relevant to the majors I'm interested in is being a neurologist. It's pretty self explanatory, but neurologists diagnose, study, and treat disorders in the central nervous system (the brain and the spinal cord) and the peripheral nervous system (all other neural elements such as eyes, ears skin, and other sensory receptors). Neurologists must go to four years of pre-medical school at a college or university, four more years of medical school resulting in a MD or DO (doctor of medicine or doctor of osteopathy degree), a one year internship in internal medicine or medicine/surgery, and at least three years in a neurology residency program. The average salary of a neurologist in San Francisco is $334,000 a year. However, the median salary across the United States is $228,726. In order to be a neurologist, one must be a people person. She has to be social, communicative, diligent, and dependable. 

Finally, people majoring in neuroscience and psychology commonly become psychiatrists. Psychiatrists treat and diagnose mental health and emotional disorders. They must know how the body functions and its relationship with the brain and the mind. Psychiatrists are the physicians and mental health professionals best qualified to distinguish between psychological and physical causes of both mental and physical distress. In order to become a psychiatrist, one must go to four years of pre-medical school at a college or university, four more years of medical school resulting in a MD or DO (doctor of medicine or doctor of osteopathy degree), a one year internship in internal medicine or medicine/surgery, and four years in a residency program, at least three of those years practicing psychiatry. The annual wage for a psychiatrist is $163,660. One must be caring, compassionate, wise with their words, and trustworthy to be a psychiatrist.