Advice for academically strong, but directionless daughter

blossom
Tue, 30 Jun 2020 15:25:22 +0000

One of my kids was an early employee at a successful startup (which has since gone public) which is a leader in a field which did not exist while said kid was in college, using technologies which did not exist when this kid was in college AND kid has never taken a CS or programming class.

Major was Poli Sci…

You can work in tech with a degree in anthropology, you can work in economic development with a degree in psychology, you can work in an investment bank with a degree in sociology.

Your D sounds great. Most people don’t have a clue at her age, they just hide it well by majoring in Accounting or something else which sounds practical, and then figure it out in their 20’s along with the Comp Lit majors and the Renaissance Studies majors!

If it were me- I’d encourage my kid to read, read, read. New Yorker, The Atlantic, Vanity Fair, New Republic, Wall Street Journal-- anything which publishes “general interest” articles with deep reporting and high quality writing. I read a story in the New Yorker about the genetics of the apple industry which made me regret not majoring in agronomy (I don’t know anything about the agriculture industry- but this article was GRIPPING.) Then a month later I read a story about the ships that now use the polar routes due to global warming (the ice caps have melted) and regretted not majoring in oceanography!

I would also encourage her to talk to as many alums of her college as possible to hear about what they do for a living. It’s easy to fall in to the trap of assuming that everyone is either a doctor, nurse, or dentist (nothing wrong with these professions of course). But does she know anyone who does market research for pharmaceutical companies? Has she every spoken with someone who recruits patients for clinical trials? Does she know what hospital patient advocates do, or what the person who manages training and learning for clinicians at a VA facility does all day? All of these folks are in health care-- but with different skills and competencies.

I could do this exercise for any industry of course. But the point is that not everyone at Starbucks is a barista, and not everyone at Apple is a coder, and not everyone at Disney performs in costume. So having multiple interests is a gift!!!