<p>Your detail about your parents job concerns explains a lot - I can only imagine how I would feel sending a child off to college and having uncertainty about my job!</p>
<p>You have gotten some great ideas - my advice was a little flippant, but I stand by it.</p>
<p>Give some consideration to the notion that there is wisdom in what your parents are saying - think about that, and incorporate it into your decisions. For example, it is a good idea to have a contingency plan (that’s part of the minor in econ), if you are like most of our children, you have no real idea what it is like to need to support yourself, having a fallback plan is not a bad idea at all. Secondly, econ is a major strength of Chicago, and you should be exposed to it - is it presented in the core? In what way?
Remember that every discipline has its “weed-out” course filled with mind-numbing detail. Making it through that class, learning something and maintaining fascination with the subject is part of what separates a dabbling interest developed when reading a lay audience book like Freakonomics, from true knowledge leading to a career. </p>
<p>Best of luck to you.</p>