Hi everyone,

this is my first post here and im very glad i found this forum.
basically Im an undergrad student going into my final year of a Genetics degree. this summer i worked in a lab and really enjoyed it. i loved the work i was doing (was working on human infectious diseases). at the moment i am very confused as to what to do when i graduate.
right now i would ultimately like to end up doing genetic counselling and working in a hospital environment with families and individuals who suffer from genetic disorders.
there is a masters course available for genetic counselling in Wales and Manchester.
however, i feel that if i were to work as a counsellor, i would like to have more knowledge about genetic disorders on a molecular biology level. i do not think that a master course could provide enough information about this. however, i could be very wrong. i feel that i would like to complete a PhD to gain more knowledge about genetic disorders.

so im wondering if anyone can inform me, is it best to:
1) do the masters course in genetic counselling alone
2) do the masters course in genetic counselling then do a PhD to get a better understanding
3) do a PhD to learn more and then do the masters course (i realise this is not the conventional way)


or any other advise you can give me would be ever so greatly appreciated.
thanks
,-)

Hey Tinkerbell. Just a very quick bit of advise from my part! If you only wanted to do a PhD just to learn more about the subject I would advise against it. It is a long and difficult path, and keep in mind that you would probably just be focusing on just one aspect of genetic disease so you may not learn too much about the broader picture. I really think that in order to do a PhD, and keep relatively sane, you would need to be fairly passionate about doing research, and willing to put up with all of the things that come with doing a PhD.

It sounds to me like you know pretty well what you want to do and I'd say the best thing would be to find out what qualification is required to go into this profession. Also if you are lab based in molecular biology it is very repetitive work and you don't learn that much by doing the lab work..Also why don't you contact someone in this line of work? I'm sure that a friendly email wouldn't be any harm to ask for some advise..

Hope that helps somehow!

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