My undergrad degree is in English literature and creative writing, with minors in mathematics and French. I have Master's degrees in computer science and clinical psychology, and have worked as a software engineer, software quality assurance guru, business analyst, counselor, and career coach over the years. I have found out the things I'm good at and like to do over the years. They're not necessarily linked to particular job or career. I don't like sitting by myself in a cubicle writing code or processing forms, I like variety and challenges, I like working with new things and starting projects more than finishing them. If you like botany, ask yourself: what is it about botany that I like? And what sort of job characteristics do I absolutely hate?
As far as money goes, as Timberline742 says, you won't make any money at botany or science (or anything else, for that matter) if you're not any good at it. But skills are something you learn: few careers require you to be born with a certain set of unique skills, or to already know them going into the start of your career. And in spite of some of the claims here, money is only part of the equation: If you make tons of money and loathe every hour you spend doing it, or you're doing something that's counter to your values, you're spending a large chunk of your life unhappy. But don't worry, you'll die with a lot of toys.
However, some careers take longer to pay off than others, and you'll have to work harder to make a decent living. For example, a counselor or psychologist will not make a lot of money when he/she gets out of school, but will do much better once he/she is fully licensed for private practice. And most mental health professionals these days who do well do so because they've spent years developing a practice, and have multiple streams of income. One of the questions you need to ask yourself is: how hard are you willing to make a career of it, and how long are you able to wait for it to pay off? You don't want to end up with $100,000 in student loans if the career you chose only pays $30,000 per year after you've been practicing in it for ten years.
Today, you have to be a bit of an entrepreneur no matter what field you're in, you need to manage your own career and be flexible. You'll find you end up doing things down the road you need imagined yourself doing ... few young people today will start out doing X, and end up still doing X forty years later.
Here is how you can investigate the options: Start by taking the Self Directed Search; it's $9.95 if you click the link here (I have no connection with the SDS and get absolutely nothing if you do so):
SDS | Self Directed Search
Be sure to read the sample report and the instructions for interpreting the results. The Self Directed Search is not about skills, it's about what sort of job characteristics are likely to make you happy based on a lot of data from a lot of different people. That is, people who are similar to you in the following preferences tend to be relatively happy in careers like this. When I took it, it flagged things like clinical psychology, speech pathology, library science. What it will give you is a list of careers to investigate, not the single best career that you were made to pursue ... for most of us, no such thing exists.
The second part is to use O*NET Online to follow up on potential careers; it will tell you what a career is like, what kind of education is recommended, what the job prospects current and future are, tools and technology used, and list related occupations you might want to look into (the Self Direct Search will give you the names as well as the O*NET codes for the careers). Then you can develop a plan to make your career happen.
Here's the link:
O*NET OnLine
For example, searching O*NET for "botany" only returns four hits ... searching for "landscape" returns 27. These are both standard tools that a career counselor or coach is likely to use in working with you.
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