<p>Calmom, one of the wonderful things about art is that it can be correctly interpreted many ways. I find the poem relevant because I believe most of the world dancers never dance professionally. My grandpa could dance and he never graduated grade school, I’ve tap danced on stage (What ever happened to Betsey Moberly) and never took a class, just paid attention in the wings early on. That poem is appropriate because we all can be more than our professional careers. A good lawyer who can cook, a doctor who can needle point amateur artists getting exposed to things because someone heard us sing in the shower and told us to try out for a play.</p>
<p>Of course to be a professional ballerina the commitment is early, but that shouldn’t keep the student from taking a bio class that isn’t required for their degree. It certainly doesn’t mean that a person who plans to be a lawyer or engineer shouldn’t take a dance class if they want. I also think the poem is appropriate because you can change to words to reflect whatever it is that you are even if you hid it from your self for a career or more. I am a teacher, I teach.</p>
<p>Mr B, one of my favorite stories that relates to this topic is about a close friend of mine from college days (she went to RISD; I was at Brown.) She was of course artistically very gifted and from an artistic family also. After leaving RISD, she had a very good series of jobs in the fashion industry and quickly got to some sort of VP level at DKNY… Concurrenly she began to volunteer at a NYC area hospital once a week, rocking and feeding the ‘crack babies’ who were cared for there. </p>
<p>She told me how every week she would look forward to Thursday, the day when she would volunteer and rock the babies. Until one day she asked herself why she was spending one evening per week doing the thing she enjoyed most instead of her whole week?</p>
<p>At about age 32 she left her lucrative and groovy fashion job, went back to school at NYU, and became a critical care nurse. She is very happy as a nurse. </p>
<p>She was a nurse before she had any inkling she was a nurse… Luckily she had an opportunity to connect to that inner self, to realize it was there-- and luckily she was unafraid to follow her inner voice and make a big change in her life. </p>
<p>Oddly enough I think her artistic temperment was what helped give her this attunement to an inner voice… and the confidence to imagine and create the new life for herself. So in a funny way, had she never been an artist, she might not have become a nurse.</p>
<p>And in response to your orignial post-- I cringe when I hear kids pick majors at 16, when they have never even tasted the banquet of subjects that are available in college! What happens when you pick a school for the marketing program, then hate marketing?</p>
<p>Funny that I have the opposite problem with my D. She has done well both academically and in visual arts at a creative and performing arts HS. </p>
<p>I have been lobbying for her to go to a LAC or a university with a decent art program then focus on art more heavily at the MFA level if the passion is still there. </p>
<p>No luck. She wants to go to a leading fine arts school for BFA and spend her time around other artists. I don’t doubt that she will continue her other interests (writing, reading, poetry) and will be in a city with plenty of other opportunities, but do wonder what will happen if she burns out.</p>
<p>if my D had lobbied to attend an art school- I would have been open to that idea. She liked both art and science and was actually more known in her school for her talent and work in the arts. She did mention several art schools that she was interested in- but when I suggested that she find a school where she could get a regular BA and take art as well as science, she was fine with that.
I don’t think that people who are focused on the arts in their teens are necessarily going to get burnt out. They may change media or ways of expression,but if they really have the desire and energy I htink that , the ability to do so will feed their imagination- not dry it out.
But if they do decide to change fields, then they just do what everyone else does- go back to school :)</p>
<p>A sigh of relief here in Steeler Nation. They made the playoffs, so anything is possible. Tough having to win everything on the road. If they beat Cincy next week, Indy is waiting… Yikes!</p>
<p>At least we don’t have to play New England next week.</p>
<p>Do you think colleges should have requirements or recommendations that students try things outside of their major, away from their strengths. The antiquated rules when I started college drove me to take fencing, water polo, chemestry, physics, and calculus. I felt bad that my D might make it through a degree without a math class beyond AP calc. Can we plan to be serinditious?</p>
<p>" I felt bad that my D might make it through a degree without a math class beyond AP calc."</p>
<p>My D will get her degree without any math past AP calc; my S will get his degree without any foreign language. Both of them are at schools with good distribution requirements, however, and I do feel that their degrees will be fairly well-rounded.</p>
<p>In the back of my mind I have this vision of an undergraduate education resulting in a higher level knowledge of history, science, math and language. It seems to be slipping toward career readiness, and specialization which is what I thought professional and graduate school was for. Am I getting old, is there no place for a generalist anymore?</p>
<p>Mr B- my idea of an undergrad education is similar to yours. I pushed Liberal Arts Colleges at my D to no end. She would not budge. She has 2 sides to her personality. One is in her opinion realistic. She loves learning and leaned towards a degree in philosophy or mythology for a while. But as she began her college search her list narrowed in on either business or a hotel management program. After looking into straight business she felt she would go crazy with boredom. She has ended up in a hotel management program at a school that has some distribution requirements that will feed some of her other areas of interest. Her favorite class first quarter was an advanced standing english course with lots of discussion. She is still firm in her stand about staying with the practical path. I still hope.
Her comment to me is that she wants one day to live where she grew up and that takes money. She doesn’t want to teach or in her words end up just being a yoga teacher.</p>
<p>Mr. B, I’m something of a generalist myself and I have a similar concern. I think economic uncertainty that’s driving larger number of students into “vocational” college planning with an eye to career $$$. </p>
<p>On the flip side, it was easier to be concerned mostly with academic exploration if you were Lord or Lady so-and-so or their American counterparts and you knew that your economic future was likely to be well in hand…and pass the scones, if you’d be so kind.</p>
<p>The best advice I got in HS, from a mentor physician, was not to be a pre-med major in college, but “taste everything” I could course-wise, and get the med school requirements in as well. It helped me solidify my desire to go into medicine, at the same time as allowing me to learn everything I could in other areas of interest- of which they were many.</p>
<p>TheDad - still we want our kids to know Pliney from a plie. Would you care for more tea?</p>
<p>galwaymom - Good advice, of course meet a major requirement but don’t miss this opportunity to experiment. My D enjoyed a class in toxicology this quarter and she took the class because it sounded interesting.</p>
I knows there’s great variability in breadth requirements at different schools, but I’m trying to recall if there are any without something like what Mr.B seeks. I thought they all fit dmd’s description one way or another. DS plans an Engineering major - which is one that I always think of as uber-pre-professional and limiting in the ability to dabble and explore. Still, even with that, he is fulfilling distribution requirements for at least 6 social sciences and humanities courses plus a writing seminar. This term, he didn’t care for the Poli Sci course he chose. But DH and I felt we could literally <em>see</em> the wheels turning, the analytical thinking and the exposure to important ideas occurring when DS discussed the topics being covered.</p>
<p>Are we saying that there are BA/BS programs where there are no distro requirements at all? Myself, I recall an aversion to the sciences back in the day (Econ major); ergo, I had a well-rounded social science/literature/arts education but fulfilled my science distribution requirements in a de minimus way with rinky-dink courses. I regret that to this day. Plan A for my retirement (soon, I hope!) is to audit or do some sort of Senior College thing with science courses.</p>
<p>This does mean that simple distro requirements can be fulfilled without really accomplishing the desired goal. Bates, as I recall, has breadth and depth requirments, calling for sequences in at least one or two of the “outside” areas so that some real level of competence/mastery occurs.</p>
<p>some schools either have much more flexibilty that what we were looking for- so that you can have engineers who never had to take a history class, or graduates who can fulfull their science requirements by taking psychology ( not typically considered a “lab” science)
We liked having a broad based of required material, even though that meant less time for really specialized classes in the field she was looking at-.
I also prefer education degrees- business- engineering and other specialized degrees to be post BA if not actually grad sschool, I know some are eager to get into the field and work, but in the long run, that broad based knowledge is missed</p>
Why not look at this from the opposite perspective? Once a career is started, one can take advantage of a plethora of learning opportunities (evening/weekend classes, continuing education seminars, self-learning, etc.) at a much more relaxed pace and one in which course selection influenced by the need for a good grade to “get into grad school” becomes a non-issue.</p>
<p>Because once a career is started, work pressures and family-starting can gobble up much of the allegedly “free” time. I’ve taken “outside the box” courses for the hell of it. I was lucky to not be in a workaholic environment. And once family commitments, even with one child kicked in, it became much harder.</p>
<p>There seldom will be as good an opportunity for exploration as there is in college. I’m no fan of mandatory breadth requirements. I’m a big fan of students who do the equivalent without “having” to.</p>