<p>One of my friends has been attending a community college with me for the past year. She has been taking care of general core education for free with a state scholarship. However, she will have racked up about 30 credits and will be out of regular classes to take after this Spring. Which means she will have to pick a major. She has absolutely no idea what she wants to do. Most of her friends are in health care and she is not interested in most of these this as she has an aversion to blood and is a mild hypochondriac. The other four areas are business, CS, social work and criminal justice. Business, CS and CJ are all out for her, based on general character traits.</p>
<p>She is naturally quiet and tends to keep to herself, but she is actually a confident person. She is very kind and always quite polite and concerned about others. Were it not for her aversion to so many things common in medicine, she would be well suited to that field. She is of average intelligence. She had a 3.3 GPA in high school, non-AP classes. When I say average, I do not mean “average for CC”. I mean average among the general population. She’s well above average at this school. I imagine her IQ is about 105. Her college GPA is 3.2.</p>
<p>She’s unfortunately not well suited to taking career tests, and became both exhausted and overwhelmed reading about different majors. Talking to an advisor last semester made her want to just drop out altogether.</p>
<p>The only real options are in the title(it is a CC remember so we only so many options). Whether or not she goes on to a 4 year school is unknown ATM. I think if she finishes here, she will. If she doesn’t pick anything in the next few months, I expect her to drop out. So I would like your input on how well you think each of these sound like they would suit someone of her academic and character type.</p>
<p>Hmm. To be honest, it’s hard to make too good a judgement as you’re giving a second hand description, a lot of it influenced by your own opinions and ideas which may or may not be the truth as far as your friend sees it. That’s not a criticism. It would be better for your friend to recognise the situation and post for herself.</p>
<p>Does the CC have any links to local or state colleges? How does it work if someone wants a major outside of those offered by the CC as a sophomore?</p>
<p>I want to point out a few flaws in your own thinking- not to be negative for the sake of it, but rather so you’ll be in a better position to help her. I’m guessing you’ve not got a background in psychology or counselling? (neither do I). But you seem to be making a lot of assumptions based on your own psychological profiling.</p>
<p>What we know as 100% reliable is that she has a 3.2 GPA at cc. She doesn’t know what major she wants and it’s stressing her out. Her meeting with her advisor wasn’t productive, she’s feeling very despondent and she doesn’t know if she’ll carry on to a 4 year college.</p>
<p>What we can’t assume, despite your best intentions are:
- That business, CJ or CS are unsuitable for her. We don’t know what she thinks or how she’s done in these classes.
- Her actual suitability for medicine. Again, unless you have more experience in the field or maybe are the child of a doctor or nurse it’s hard to judge properly.
3.Her IQ. You can’t guess it. It’s calculated on results from certain psychological tests. It is quite different from how you necessarily do in academic work. And only measures your ability to take IQ tests- a narrow field of native educated language and thinking skills. I say this as someone with a ridiculously high IQ whose short term memory has more holes than Swiss cheese.
- On what basis is she not suited to taking career tests? There are lots using different factors. And they only match certain aspects of personality and job. It’s not an infallible method.
- Expecting her to drop out is predicting the future. If you’re thinking she’s on the way out, you’ll be projecting an element of that negativity to her. It might be possible but if you can be more positive it might help her positively.</p>
<p>Re: health care- squeamishness can be gotten over. Lots of trainee doctors have fainted over simple procedures. Desensitisation such as gradually building up the gore factor on youtube can help with her comfort levels. Hypochondria can affect everyone, especially with a medical textbook. Unless she’s been told by her doctor she’s a hypochondriac, she may very well be unwell just because she doesn’t ‘look’ or ‘act’ ‘genuinely’ ill. </p>
<p>Please get her to make another appointment with a different advisor- she can ask for this. Ask her to write down questions to ask so that both she and the advisor can get the most out of the session. You could help her with this. Also, tell her that your major rarely ties you down to a specific career unless she wants to work in medicine/nursing/accountancy/architecture. She should start with what she’d enjoy studying for the next couple of years. </p>
<p>I’d also get her to post for herself on cc. Folks are really helpful and might come up with things she hasn’t. But she really needs to do this herself. It’s her future. She’s the best one to tell us what her anxieties are and what her thoughts on her major is.
You’re obviously a really good, supportive friend and its great you’re there with her to help her through this. With your help to get her to better communicate her own needs and wants from college and life, she’ll get there. Think facilitation rather than leading by the hand :)</p>