<p>OP, sometimes thiings just look, sound and act like a duck.</p>
<p>somewhere, a ■■■■■ is smiling</p>
<p>My friend’s daughter was an art history major who graduated from a LAC <em>!!!</em> and got a job at Google. Great salary, bennies and a huge signing bonus on top of that. Go figure. :)</p>
<p>I’m an arts and humanities major (literally, my major is the Residential College in Arts and Humanities) with an internship <em>gasp</em> and a nicely paying job with the state. What?! Impossible, you say!</p>
<p>Was your internship a paid or unpaid internship?</p>
<p>"we are thinking about telling her she MUST get an internship/research every semester "
You are making progress but are still NOT being realistic. Landing a PAID research internship during the first 2 years of college is still expecting WAY too much.
1] Most research positions go to Upper class students who are already KNOWN by professors AND are FIRST offered to majors in the professors field of study. So if your D starts college not sure of what her eventual major will be, she is NOT going to be able to land a research position,let alone a paid one, ESPECIALLY during the school year. Profs dont take the time during the school year to teach newbies interns what they need to know in order to be of any value to them. Aint going to happen…
It is FAR more realistic for her to be able to find some sort of internship through the college during the summer, which is when most college students find their first internships. Outside internships [ those not offered by the college] that pay, especially these days, are VERY hard to find. Read the multiple threads written by both parents and students, regarding this very subject over the last year.
Most are unpaid to give students a chance to see if an area appeals to them.</p>
<p>I actually don’t think you are a ■■■■■ but I am troubled by your obvious wish that your daughter become a female version of your son. You don’t seem to have a very high opinion of her intellect but I can promise you that she’s very aware of how you feel about her and that fact alone will make things harder for her. Trust me, you can’t re-make who she is.</p>
<p>I’m married to a STEM guy and I know that while he is pretty well-read and did just as well in english and humanities courses as he did in math and science, I do recognize that sometimes he and other tech-degree people just don’t get the concept of majoring in liberal arts. I would respectfully suggest that you and your spouse try to remove the STEM-blinders and make an effort to understand that careers do exist outside your comfort zone.</p>
<p>I realize that it’s heresy on CC to advocate for community college but since most of the highly educated, Ivy-worshiping folks who frequent these boards don’t actually know anything about cc’s I’d like to suggest that you and your daughter consider them. They are an absolute Godsend for many highly intelligent students who could easily be admitted to top 30 4 year universities, but are either not confident enough, mature enough, or academically ready to commit to chosing their life’s work (they think) within 2 years.</p>
<p>I personally know of too many bright but unready kids (whose parents would have been horrified at the thought of their bright high schooler attending a cc) who crashed and burned at their 4 year schools (the cc’s are full of them) and whose parents have shelled out $30k+ for the experience. It’s far better to let the kids who need some extra time to grow and experiment do it in that environment than experience major failure at current 4 year tuition rates. So what if they don’t complete their bachelors degree by the time they are 21?</p>
<p>OT but:
</p>
<p>What’s with the grudge against J.K.R., emeraldkity?</p>
<p>A close relative of mine got a PhD in genetics from a fine university–and was surrounded by low-paid lab rats like himself, all with fabulous degrees. A science degree is in no way a ticket to big pay. As for engineering, it seems to be all-or-nothing. Sometimes certain kinds of engineers are hot, sometimes there’s NOTHING for them. I have a relative who’s in the computer business and he says it’s wicked right now–jobs are going to India and Argentina. I know a good number of people who have lost their IT jobs recently because of course a lot of the work can be done on computers half a world away. </p>
<p>I am in much of the same boat as you are–I have an art history major child. I don’t MAKE him work, but I don’t give him spending money ($53,000 is enough already, thanks!). So he does have a couple of small part time jobs so he can keep up with his friends and do fun stuff. And these jobs have given him great skills. He’s becoming very entrepreneurial, actually. At 18, he was completely impractical. But now that he’s earning his spending money, he has a better sense of it. I would not treat your daughter’s future plans as a punishment–kids change so much and learn so much that I would wait and see. She knows what you think, and i think that’s fair. But you can back off now, and that will give her the space to consider the validity of her choice. Maybe she’d hate women’s studies in reality. Or, maybe she’d be so desperate to prove you wrong that she found some way to leverage the degree into something fabulous. Either way, you win!</p>
<p>Joblue- a commercially successful writer & a * good* one are two different things. Just because I don’t care for someones style of writing, doesn’t mean I have a grudge- that implies that it means something to me.</p>
<p>
O-M-G!!! - 53,000??? is this child graduated or not? See, this is EXACTLY what we are afraid of and i don’t know why so many poster are making light of it. </p>
<p>
Sigh, and this is why we wish she would just do engineering like her brother, in this market you’re almost handed a job and “WOW!!!”-ing internships - but before i get attacked again for saying that, i know it won’t happen and she doesn’t want to do it, but it’s just a dream. Life is not fair. Also, my own experience is that getting a job wasn’t instant but it was light years easier (recruiters, engineer job fairs) than my colleagues in the liberal arts like english, political science, ect and ect. </p>
<p>
Soon we are going to try to push CC and a part time job. My sister lives in a city daughter likes better with a better CC, so maybe that would be good for her if she went to live there. She certainly would not be happy about being told to stay here and live at home for uni/college.</p>
<p>Gussied, I must say that what I picture is you and your husband hunkered down working down a strategy to rope in your daughter - is there a problem just sitting down with HER and working out a solution? To talk and discuss (not threaten) your concerns? To really listen to her concerns and thoughts without holding something over her head???</p>
<p>“Also, my own experience is that getting a job wasn’t instant but it was light years easier (recruiters, engineer job fairs)”</p>
<p>OP, what happened to you the past is not a predictor of the future. Since you went to college the world has gone “flat”, is now highly interconnected [ via the internet] and smart highly trained , CHEAP engineers in INDIA or CHINA have a lock on the entry level engineering jobs that used to be available here. Open your eyes! The world has changed unimaginably in the past 20 years. There are no “safe” engineering jobs these days, [excluding petroleum engineers] unless you are very, very smart AND lucky enough to land a CS job in SV with Google or Facebook or such. Wishful , magical thinking will not help you, or your D.</p>
<p>You realize, don’t you?, that students who start at community college are much less likely to obtain a bachelor’s degree than students who start at a four-year college. Even controlling for things like high school GPA and test scores. If they attend community college part time, graduation rates are in low single digits.</p>
<p>I hope your daughter finds the gumption not to go along with your plan to have her fail in order to validate your, your husband’s, and your favored child’s life choices.</p>
<p>Major in what you love, not what you think would make more money. (whatever that means)</p>
<p>
Stop pushing. Stop controlling. Stop dictating. Stop living her life for her. Tell her your financial limits/ parameters and let her figure it out. Then she will own her choice and not justifiably blame you for whatever happens.</p>
<p>As for the other pipe dreams, sorry but get real. Some of the high paying internships and jobs are still out there. My s’s are engineers. Older one was in school during the good ol days of the good economy. He had great, high paying mech E internships and his choice of jobs. He had a great GPA from a great school. Younger s also has a good GPA from a good school, had a good Chem E internship this summer-- it paid $10/hr. Times have changed.
Your dau will maybe get internships if she goes to a good school, is involved in her program and does well. If she hates it- fuggedaboutit.</p>
<p>Just do engineering like her brother? Well tthat sounds fair doesn’t it?</p>
<p>Making her study something she doesn’t like and will not do well at is way worsen then letting her study what she loves and will excel at</p>
<p>Some people find engineering boring and mind numbing and no amount of pushing will an engineer make if the person hates it</p>
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<p>Most of the students in community college are not intending to get a bachelor’s degree anyway. They may be taking personal interest courses (e.g. learning a foreign language) or taking courses leading to an associates degree or other occupational education (e.g. firefighting, skilled trades).</p>
<p>^^^
Thank you. I do get tired of people who try to use this statistic to justify putting down community colleges. Many, many students who want to eventually get their BA/BS degree successfully transfer to universities from cc’s. The others may just want to get a 2 year tech degree and repair hvac systems, trouble-shoot computer problems or become radiology techs. Nothing wrong with that either. We’re all going to have to get over this anti-cc prejudice if the cost of college continues to spike up every year. The center just cannot hold.</p>
<p>OP, sorry to go OT.</p>
<p>allgussiedup, are you OMG-ing that $53,000 is a fabulous salary or a terrible one? Why are you afraid of it?</p>
<p>The $53,000 is referring to the cost of college in a year (jokingly referred to as spending money), not a salary.</p>
<p>Anyway, OP, if you graduated in the mid eighties and walked out into a ready made engineering job – that was a different economy then. Why you are projecting it to today is beyond me. Frankly, my liberal arts friends did way better long term than the engineering ones, who started out a bit higher but never got to upper management positions.</p>