<p>I’ll start with college, but feel free to discuss travel or anything else you feel is over planned.
I heard that when Robert Redford was a youth he was a motor head, and that somewhere along the way he was convinced to take a drawing class. This led him to study art in New York City, where he got employment painting stage back drops. This in turn led him to some small parts in acting. Aren’t we glad he didn’t become a garage mechanic? Nature Photographer Elliot Porter was given a camera as a graduation gift from medical school. I am sure you can think of some people who changed direction in school.</p>
<p>One of the things I liked about high school and my undergraduate years in college was the chance to experiment with music, art, history, science and economics. I was eventually lured away from construction technology by the sirens of economics. So I am concerned when I read of high school students who are deciding what extra curricula activity will be “best” for them based on college admissions, then what courses or majors will get them into “the” law school. The urban legends of parents fighting to get into a certain pre school because it impacts the Harvard option is beyond my comprehension.</p>
<p>As adults do we have a responsibility to encourage our children to experiment, to take courses about things we ourselves know nothing about? Is it a sin when a ballerina becomes a math major or a scientist becomes a painter? Is there too much planning?</p>
<p>We could just as easily talk about vacations ( it’s 11am we should be in Holland by now) </p>
<p>I can answer one of those questions: nothing wrong with the ballerina who becomes a math major. :)</p>
<p>Seriously, I think there is something to your point. I am dismayed by some of the rigid career planning I see in the posts of 17- and 18-year-olds who have their undergrad, graduate school, and first job(s) already scoped out. </p>
<p>Planning is useful. But, in the words of Von Schlieffen, it pays to remember that no plan survives contact with reality. (Mebbe it was Bismarck…but the idea was right.) One of the things that I look for in people when I’m talent spotting is the ability to hit a curveball, to adapt to changes of circumstances, to pivot and move in a new direction when required. A flexibility of both mind and spirit.</p>
<p>I think you make a wise and valid point. DS thinks he wants to be an Engineer. This leaves him really no room to experiment and explore curriculum-wise in his first year (or even two) at college. I lament this. In his case, I think he is <em>probably</em> right about what he wants, and he has chosen a school where he can change if he so desires. But, given the choice, I would much prefer a smorgasbord approach to the early college curriculum. Yet we see kids in despair that they are going in as the Dreaded Undeclared.</p>
<p>I also think we sometimes take the mantra to “have a passion” to the point where we direct kids toward having a “tunnel” into which they should channel themselves from the earliest opportunity, designing too much of their lives to fulfill the destiny they, or someone, chose for them very, very early. This fits some few human beings, I am sure; but probably not as many as are directed along these lines.</p>
<p>Being the parent of a twice-derailed Tulane/Katrina student (first when Katrina closed Tulane; second when Tulane dispensed with his planned major), I can say that the great blessing in the experience has been my son learning that your life is not what you plan. It is how you respond to what happens when fate intervenes in those plans. Your attitude, your ability to see other possibilities, your refusal to wallow in the woes which have befallen you - this is what will define how your life works for you. This is not quite what the OP was discussing, but it is related. As TheDad says, the ability to hit a curveball, adapt, pivot, respond not just to derailment, but also to rejection and failure. Flexibility of mind and spirit is a beautiful way to put it, TheDad.</p>
<p>My mom used to say “Life is what happens while you are making other plans.” Don’t know who originally said it, but it rings true. My planning, trips and such, is usually overcome by my absentmindedness. One such occasion would be when I left my purse at a tollbooth in Troyes, France, after paying a speeding ticket. We got all the way into Paris before I realized it, then we got to go to a police station in the 8th Aggrandisement (I think…) which was an adventure in itself, given my level of High School French and the colorful nature of the neighborhood. Oh, and the trunk on the car wouldn’t lock, so we were awakened all night by the fear that all of our luggage would be spirited away in the night. My husband was so annoyed with the French (many more experiences had intervened…) that we drove until we reached Germany at 2 in the morning and found a little hostel with lights on. It turned out to be a group of Italians drinking in the pizzeria below the rooms, and when they learned that we were from Lago Patria, they opened up and offered us a room free of charge. We asked about food, and they responded that the kitchen was closed. So we started tramping through, and when they realized that we had an 8 year old they immediately went into overdrive and these half-dozen middle aged men whipped up a feast. I haven’t heard so many “Mangia! Mangia Piu!” (Eat! Eat more!) since. Ah, and it all started because I left my purse at the tollbooth. That is serendipity. :)</p>
<p>That said, we are notorious for believing in the old adage “Luck is when preparation meets opportunity.” We are preparers. We are also notorious for having contingency plans for our contingency plans. We know that the best laid plans are just that, plans, so we always have an escape plan that we can default to and live with. Perhaps it was the 20+ years of military moves and order changes, but we are very flexible and adaptable. Thought we were going to Germany, for instance, and prepped for that, but found out 2 weeks before leaving that we were going to Italy. LOVED Italy. I think half of being able to appreciate serendipity is being able to switch gears and adapt to the new situation without looking back at the “what ifs.”</p>
<p>It is sad when a lack of flexibility throws people for a loop when life throws a curveball.</p>
<p>I think it is very important to have goals and to see progress towards those goals- but it is also important to see the bigger picture and realize that optimally education is about the whole person, not just what is required for a certain job at a certain firm.
I admit I was a little freaked out when I realized that my daughter would need to take a year away from her college and retake a class.
But everything is working out well, and she is in a better place for her senior year than many other students who have plowed right through.</p>
<p>( Steve Jobs commencment speech at Stanford last spring addressed serendipity. He dropped out of Reed, but stayed around campus taking classes that interested him, including calligraphy which was important in the development of the Apple os)</p>
<p>Maybe some people are. We’re not. By May we’ll have sold almost everything we own and be wandering toward a northwestern university to help run a summer camp. Then we’ll wander down the left coast in our RV, which will by then be our home. All we know is that we’ll be back around here by Mom’s birthday and spend the holidays with her. We’ll be findable, thanks to Starband and the internet, but we certainly won’t commit to being anywhere in particular for long.</p>
<p>Our son, a freshman, has already had to attend two unis (Tulane and Cornell) and done quite well so far. He’s also changed his mind about his major once so far, and that is as it should be. He is a fine musician, but he’s danced around over at least six different instruments in the last seven years. Nothing wrong with that, either. His control of basic skills and music theory is terrific! And music has absolutely nothing to do with what he wants to do in college, at least so far.</p>
<p>There will be plenty of time for him and for us to settle down later–or not. Everyone has to have the level of stability with which he or she is comfortable. I would never criticize someone else for NOT wanting to live the life we are about to live. I find it funny that so many others have an opinion about our choices. But I do think some people don’t allow themselves to consider all the possibilities that are out there for them. It would be especially sad if people as young as college students already felt bound to a pattern.</p>
<p><em>people</em> is hanging her head in shame… true, true, true - this whole thread is reminding me how very precious and short the college years are. Shame on me, because I’ve lately been hammering on my middle son about staying on-course with his college course planning, internship at the proper time or he’ll have trouble getting a job after graduation, etc. He’s a free spirit, and would love nothing more than to play around for an extra couple of years, taking (auditing, probably) random interesting courses and music ensembles. sigh… hard to see where the line should be drawn! Right now, I’m feeling like the snuffer of youthful enthusiasm!</p>
<p>“The best-laid plans o’ mice an’ men Gang aft a-gley”</p>
<p>My mum knew when still a kid that she wanted to be a teacher, and carried on through with it and is teaching 40 years on. Not to say she didn’t consider changing her mind on occasion.
I thought I had things all planned out - study politics at a British Ivy-type university, get a highpaying job, etc. Life threw a spanner in the works, I reevaluated, and thanks to a nice little chance, I’m at drama school in what friends, family and me agree is a perfect fit.
No matter how much we plan, things don’t always necessarily go as we expect :D</p>
<p>Momof1, the quote “Life is what happens when you’re making other plans” is attributed to John Lennon.</p>
<p>I do think about this with my son at MIT, but he’s been focused on computers since he had the dexterity to use the keyboard. He has said he will probably be in a big enough city to take some “fun” classes once he graduates. He does have other interests and seems to be very happy so far.</p>
<p>My high school junior is still enjoying a lot of things, and that’s fine with me.</p>
<p>I love this Freudian slip. The correct word is arrondissement, But in honor of the French notion of la gloire, aggrandissement is not inapt, especially in reference to the 8th arrondissement. Very posh;)</p>
<p>Well, plans are what we make for the future … serendipity is what we find when we look back over time, and start to reconstruct how we got there. So I wouldn’t bemoan planning – it really is a matter of flexibility, not too much or too little planning.</p>
<p>I mean, one thing leads to another, but we often find ourselves in the place where unexpected opportunity strikes because of meticulous planning that got us there. </p>
<p>I mean… what would have happened if Robert Redford hadn’t taken that art class? We’ll never know… something else might have led him to his acting career, or perhaps he would have taken a different direction. I think he’s probably too smart to have been satisfied with a lifelong career as a mechanic… but who knows where else that might have led? And to second guess his biography with what ifs is to commit the sin of too much reverse planning; that is, it seems as if you are tracing things back and fretting over the historical possibility that without the one set of serendipidous factors, another set of factors might have led him another way. Einstein could have been a musician rather than a physicist, and a world without the benefit of his scientific mind would be a very different place… but then again, I can imagine a parallel universe in which the Einstein’s musical genius is considered as irreplaceable as Mozart. Either way, I doubt he would have lasted long as a patent clerk. We are all driven in part by our basic personality and inclinations – which means that part of what we see as “serendipity” is merely one of many possible triggering events which reveals an underlying talent or desire. When is it an accident, and when is it fate?</p>
<p>I think it’s possible to plan for things to happen to you, to plan for serendipity. My daughter deliberately chose a college (Reed) with a broad distribution requirement, because she was sure that she would be interested in things she hadn’t learned about yet, as just one example.</p>
<p>I also believe that no matter how much you plan, things will happen that change those plans. My husband’s cancer at age 41 made him stop and re-evaluate everything he’d been doing since he started his first company at age 22; he stopped working entirely for 4 years while we did all the things he’d always meant to do, like bicycling across the country and traveling extensively. A friend of ours accidentally started a company when he sold some extra bike tires on E-Bay. </p>
<p>Many years ago, I was part of an MIT program that sent MIT women graduates into the public schools to talk to students about taking as much math and science as possible, so that they didn’t prematurely close off life paths. One of the many things we pointed out is that after 10 years most (I think it was 80%) people are not working in the area for which they trained as undergraduates; you can’t count on your job lasting a lifetime.</p>
<p>Some of us think of the basic liberal arts education as a way of keeping as many choices open for as long as possible–yet another way of planning for inevitable change.</p>
<p>As someone who is enjoying my third or fourth “career,” I am most definitely grateful for having learned <em>how</em> to learn. The facts I learned in college are often no longer fully accurate (my degree is in biology, so a great deal more detail is now available)–but the core knowledge of how to write clearly and verify information has been incredibly useful. You could call my life changes serendipity, or you could call them choosing among many alternate paths kept open for me by good planning.</p>
<p>Unfortunately, finances can dictate what job or job path you take after graduation–at least for a few years. A large amount of student loans after law school, for example, can direct you away from public service for the first part of your career.</p>
<p>unless you go to the university of wa and grab a gates grant that will pay for your law degree if you spend the first part of your career in public service :)</p>
<p>I guess what sparked this conversation was when a student economics major was asking people what his second major or minor should be to improve his chances of getting into law school. It just seemed sad to me that if twenty of us got together and posted “Mandarin Chinese” he might have decided to consider that for a second major instead of asking himself, “What would I like to learn?”</p>
<p>I remember casually telling students that speech and debate was a good EC. without considering what their real interest were. So I wanted to discuss this idea of planning what we learn as a way of getting to how we earn instead of learning things because we are curious. I still pick up rocks to see what is underneath, and I am worried about the students who walk past brilliant lectures because it isn’t on their list of things to do to get to that career. I also believe that people given enough opportunities will continually turn toward what makes them happy, even if it isn’t the source of their paycheck. I kept this poem attached to the inside of my brief case for the past thirty years. It even applies to math majors.</p>
<p>Actually your dance poem is not apt for this discussion… at least in the world specific to dance.</p>
<p>Dance is one of those careers which really requires early and intense training. A 16 year old budding ballerina who has not already had years of instruction in a strong pre-professional program stands virtually no chance whatsoever of making it in mainstream ballet. Other forms of dance, such as hip hop, can be more foregiving for the late bloomer … but for the most part, as far as a professional career is concerned, early training is essential. </p>
<p>Which kind of illustrates the point that serendipity can take you only so far. There aren’t too many accidental brain surgeons. (“Oh yes, I thought I wanted to be a poet, but then during my senior year in college someone suggested rocket science instead, so I sent an email to NASA and they signed me right up.”) </p>
<p>There are a lot of career choices that really do require meticulous planning and early preparation. Acting and photography - examples cited in the opening post - don’t happen to fit that mold. Nor does web design or novel-writing. And my children can be very grateful that it doesn’t take all that much in advance preparation for a person to do a reasonably good job at parenting. But when you go to the symphony it is likely that most of the musicians you are listening to were taking lessons when they were 12. The bridge you drive across was most likely designed by an engineer who was very, very serious about math in high school. And our world would be a mess without best laid plans that didn’t go awry.</p>
<p>I feel sorry for the kids who are in engineering school or pre-med today because their parents won’t hear of anything else… but very grateful for those who know their own minds and have the internal motivation and dedication to start early on the path to laying a foundation for their future careers.</p>
<p>Dance is one of those careers which really requires early and intense training. A 16 year old budding ballerina who is not already had years of instruction in a strong pre-professional program stands virtually no chance whatsoever of making it in mainstream ballet. Other forms of dance, such as hip hop, can be more foregiving for the late bloomer … but for the most part, as far as a professional career is concerned, early training is essential.</p>
<p>and how
when my 8 year old got a part in the PNB nutcracker- I freaked- it was Balanchine style which was probably why D got nabbed- I didn’t want her to be groomed to be a ballerina- so we pulled out- it was a shame because she enjoyed the classes but they start so young to prepare them for a professional career.</p>
<p>EK - sorry you pulled your daughter out! As the mother of a d. who performed in countless Nutcrackers and who was on stage with an adult professional modern dance company at the age of 8, I have to assure you that the dance companies do not “nab” unwilling youngsters. An 8-year-old Nutcracker cast member will generally perform as tyke emerging from underneath the skirts of Mother Ginger, or as a guest and friend of Clara & Fritz, and hardly be expected to do more than look cute in their costume and run on and off stage on cue. The more professional the company, the less they expect of small children – they don’t want to have the performance marred by a confused and overwhelmed kid. The vast majority of little girls who audition for spots in the beginning level classes for the pre-professional programs do not stick around for more than 2 years – by the time they hit puberty most will have been weeded out by the intensity of their training or the limits of their ability, or because of what puberty does to their body type.</p>
<p>So signing up an 8 year old for ballet lessons is no more of a commitment than signing up for soccer or gymnastics. A very small percentage of the kids will have the ability, ambition and determination to go for a career… most will simply have the benefit of their experience and go on to something else.</p>
<p>Childhood is a great time to begin the exploration that leads to providing opportunities, serendipidous and otherwise, later in life. Which is why my daughter was signed up for dance lessons and gymnastics and swimming and violin and piano. After 14 continuous years of dance training - she started at age 4 and attends an audition-required arts high school – she will not be studying or continuing with formal dance training in college, unless she attends one of the handful of schools on her list with a strong dance program open to non majors. But she will always have the experiences her dance training brought her; and she also can still do standing backflips and remains a strong swimmer, mediocre piano-player, and really lousy violinist. If anything, the years of dance training got the whole idea out of her system – it is a lot of hard work she doesn’t want to do to get to be the Sugarplum Fairy. </p>
<p>In fairness to you, you were probably put off by the competitiveness of other moms of little princess ballerinas – I always hated the stage moms too, made it a point to avoid them, and always insisted that my daughter reserve time in her life for family and friends and goofing off. Probably not such a good path in terms of a future professional dance career, but my d’s memories of some extraordinary experiences for a small child will last a lifetime.</p>
<p>D at 8 had done creative( modern) dance and primarily was doing the dance class at PNB because it was close to our house and a friend was supposedly going to take it with her so we could carpool-
she only was in the class for two years- and I only let her audition because it seemed the whole class was, I really didn’t expect she would get a part.
If it had been at another time of the year for a different ballet- I might have considered it- but to take two months plus of getting out of school early for rehersals ( even dancers that just run across the stage are expected to stay for all rehersals)plus it would have required staying in town for the holidays- something I really didn’t want to do. Combine that with the worry that once my D performed on stage she would be enthralled with the whole thing( not to mention being paid!)- even with the 13 yr olds who smoked cigarretes to still hunger pangs while they grabbed their thighs in horror- it wasn’t the other ballet moms- I really only talked to a mom whose family owned a big music store- and she looked at ballet as just something for little girls to do.
I think that was also the year we had a huge snow storm- so dancers from out of town were having to stay in hotels to make sure they didn’t miss a show-with a new baby and one that was high needs- I really didn’t want any more stress.
D did perfom at the recital at the end of the year in the Opera house so that was pretty exciting and the next year she switched to girls choir ;)( which lasted for another two years till she found ponies)</p>
<p>OK, EK… I was just as happy when my daughter didn’t get selected for a role in the traveling company for Showboat after making the final cut of six girls from which 3 were ultimately cast. Between the cost of parking and getting a hotel near the theater to be close by during the 6 week run, plus having to pay full cost for the tickets - the other moms ended up feeling rather harried. But that’s one of those situations where luck and serendipity might have had an interesting affect on our lives - my d. went to the audition on a lark after seeing a notice for an open casting call looking for girls her exact height. If she had been blonde, she probably would have gotten the part. (Casting call was looking for blondes, but most of the blondes who showed up were the wrong height)</p>