BA of general studies?

blossom
Tue, 23 Mar 2010 17:02:55 +0000

Twisted, I know you’re taking it on the chin on another thread so I thought I’d post my comments here- both to be supportive of you, and not to hijack the other person’s thread.

I like you. You are funny and quick and I enjoy reading your posts. So I don’t intend any of this to be critical- just helpful if it can be.

You need to get off this board for a bit. Take a week’s vacation; post yourself a sticky note on your computer which says, “NO CC AND I MEAN IT”. And then in a week you can come back. But you need to take care of business in real life, and this board is not helping you do that- and in fact, is probably blocking your path a bit.

Then you need to make an appointment at the Career Development office. You need to sit down with one of the nice and kindly folks there and instead of unloading all the things you can’t do, or that are difficult for you, or that are impossible for you given your LD’s and your autism, you need to tell them what you’re good at, what you’re terrible at, what you love to do and are interested in, and what you hate to do. Just like any other Michigan student. Nobody is good at everything, and you are not the first student to face a roadblock of some kind with your intended major.

They may give you a standardized test-- and don’t worry, no accommodations required, take as long as you need. Then someone will walk you through the results- you’d be a good social worker, you’d be a terrible linguist, you’d be great as an urban planner, you’d be terrible as a statistician, etc.

You need someone there to work with you on the implications of you switching tracks now. They may tell you that the BGS is perfectly fine given your career interests- they may tell you that nobody gets into grad school with the BGS but that employers don’t care-- I don’t know what they’ll tell you. But neither do you, and neither do any of the well meaning folks on this board. We don’t know.

And then you need to figure things out- so that’s when you can come back next week with some information. People here can be helpful if you need some alternate financing alternatives if you decide to extend your time at Michigan. People here can be helpful suggesting transfer options that won’t cost you an arm and a leg if you decide that staying for a BGS isn’t worth the extra cost. But we are trying to help you with no knowledge or data and that’s going to hurt you.

Now my other suggestion-- stop worrying about law school. You remind me of the poster’s here who often write that although they can afford their EFC they don’t want to spend it on their kids college education since then they won’t be able to help the kid with the downpayment after he’s married or help their grandkids with their college education. Drives me nuts- you won’t help the kid who sits at your dinner table every night, but you’re ready to help some unborn grandchild who may show up in 25 years needing tuition? You are ready to saddle your kid with educational loans that aren’t necessary but are ready to buy some condo someday for a wife he hasn’t met yet?

So don’t do that. You have enough on your plate without worrying about law school. Right now you need to finish your undergraduate degree and be employable when you graduate. Enough time for the future later on.

And although I don’t know you (obviously) I will make a suggestion that you may find law and law school to be exceptionally poor choices for you given what you’ve written about yourself. Being interested in law and helping people and advocating for them isn’t the same as passing the bar or sitting through a semester of civil procedure and participating in oral arguments and all that jazz. There are many ways that someone interested in political science and the law can be a happy and productive adult- and it strikes me that given some of your challenges, a JD isn’t the road to happy and productive for you.

But that’s for later. Go log off, make an appointment at the career office to talk through the implications of the BGS, and come back next week and tell us how it’s going. And get more sleep!!!