Post Thanksgiving Blues

Northstarmom
Sun, 25 Nov 2007 12:12:27 +0000

Probably most students change majors in college. More than likely, your S picked engineering because he was good in math and science and thought he’d enjoy the major and would get preparation for a career that would be lucrative.

If he’s not enjoying the major, there’s no reason for him to stick with it. There are many fields in which he probably could be happy and financially successful. My advice to you would be to encourage him to talk to his advisor and to other students – in engineering and other majors, while also using the campus career center and/or counseling center to find out what careers may best suit him. There probably are some free or low cost assessment tools that he can take to find out what kind of careers would make him happy.

Younger S is extremely talented in math and science, but after taking a selective summer program in engineering realized that he did not want to major in that because he wanted the option of being able to have a more expansive curriculum than engineering allows. Afterward, when he took a career assessment tool (the Strong inventory) of the kind that I mentioned, he learned that his personality is very different than that of most people who go into engineering. While he can definitely do the academic work, he wouldn’t enjoy the field or the people in it as much as he’d enjoy other kinds of work. For him, a liberal arts major is a good fit.