<p>Hello, Just "stumbled upon"this site, we’ll see what happens. </p>
<p>Son and daughter are both pretty good students who went to the same high school … but son has always been a cut above and it shows in his major choice, electrical. They are a year apart. Daughter is a very genuine person and a kind, caring person but while her counterpart’s ECs have consisted of wowing internships and lots of hands on type of activities Daughter’s have been baby sitting, working at a coffee shop and so on. </p>
<p>Daughter, a HS school senior, wants to major in woman’s and gender studies. When she told me this I had an OMG moment. Husband is mechanical and I am civil. </p>
<p>But we milled it over and finally we decided, fine, she’s bright and maybe she’ll get a job somewhere. But lately we’ve thought about it and honestly, we think the opportunity cost is just too great (besides the fact that we dont see “women’s and gender studies,” whatever that really means as a subject worthy of FOUR YEARS of costly college education). </p>
<p>We have told her that she will work 20-25 hours a week at least or she will not be receiving a dime from us. The thing is that even internships these days only want people who have skills i.e. not lib arts majors, according to my son and according to my own search, they want people with quantitative skills. So any internship she did get would probably be clerical in nature and uninspiring and boring for her. we are also thinking her workload will be light enough so as to permit her to be working (not to step on any toes, but everyone knows that engineers and natural science people have to study more on average than other majors - NOT TO SAY that that’s always the case, I am sure there are many very hard working and driven liberal arts majors). We also picture her going the way of most liberal arts freshmen and going totally gaga over some extreme social activism issues, which we are not a fan of. </p>
<p>On the other hand we have sat down and talked with her and even had her go to her GC and talk about whether this major was the best idea in this economy. We are trying to push her into biology or another comparatively easy science just so she’ll have SOME skills under her belt by the time she graduates. We are trying really hard to talk some sense into this girl. Again I do NOT mean to insult the liberal arts in general, I just think it’s SO silly in this economy to play around taking up subjects that should be hobbies at best. </p>
<p>But i talked with my sister about this (a political science major in college who then went on to law school, hated it, dropped out and has been a housewife ever since, go figure) and she says I am playing favorites… She said that Daughter with her lib arts major will have lots of reading, writing etc to do. In your experience is this true? This sister was always having take home exams and that sort of thing so we’re not sure whether to trust her. Please give us any advice you have, we want what is best for both our kids and we think making D work would build up her character as well as giving her SOMETHING to put on her resume and an iota of financial security post-grad.</p>
for the humor impaired)</p>