How I chose the Cognitive Science major at UC Davis: A process of elimination

New hair. Who dis?

About a year ago, I posted a blog about my return to school. I called it "A Three-Year, Self-Funded Research Sabbatical."

Well, I'm excited to share that my latest stint at community college is complete, and I'm on to university-level education to study Cognitive Science at the University of California, Davis.

Prior to this more recent return to school, I had already earned an Associate of Science in Graphic Communication (in 2006). Then, at community college last year, I earned an Associate's in Social and Behavioral Sciences. For that, I took statistics, linguistics, symbolic logic, and research methods.

Symbolic logic, I'm still wrapping my head around. Research methods, though, was the bread and butter of my work at Open Notes Labs. And ultimately, that work at Open Notes Labs is what led me to want to return school and finally earn my bachelor's degree in the first place.

So how did a 47-year-old, brain cancer patient advocate with a background in communications, patient advocacy, and health services research come to choose this major? Excellent question.

I knew I wanted to attend a university with a strong research program. I'm married, and I live with a serious chronic condition (aka brain cancer), so I didn't want to leave the community (Sacramento) that supported both Brett and me when we were between brain surgeries. UC Davis is a 17-minute drive from my house. Choosing UC Davis was a no-brainer. (Pun intended!)

But choosing my major was a different story.

For that, I searched the UC Davis website and found a page where you could explore majors by career field. Through a process of elimination, I found that I was most interested in majors within the College of Letters and Science, which pointed me to a drop-down list of career fields. I then selected “Health/Medicine/Veterinary”, because I'd been working in healthcare for more than 15 years at that point, not including my lived experience with brain cancer.

Then I explored what was left based on my strengths and interests and landed on three fields: Communications, Health, and Social Sciences. Each of these fields included Cognitive Science and Psychology as a potential major. From there, I visited the pages for both and looked at their possible career trajectories.

I'd honestly never heard of Cognitive Science, but when I reviewed the possible job trajectories listed, it specifically called out "researcher," and mentioned that areas of graduate study could include brain sciences, human-computer interaction, and some areas of medicine. Exploring human cognition and the brain called to me.

So how did I choose my major? It was a process of elimination, nearly two decades of learning to live with brain cancer, and genuine curiosity. Stay tuned.