Post Thanksgiving Blues

Marian
Sun, 25 Nov 2007 12:22:16 +0000

It was smart of your son to start out as an engineering major.

Engineering programs are highly structured and sequential. If he had started out with something else and wanted to transfer to engineering later, he probably would not have been able to do it without spending an extra semester or two in college.

But just because he started in engineering doesn’t mean he has to stay there. Most kids who start in engineering don’t really know what engineering is like – there really isn’t any good introduction to the field in high school. He may want to explore other majors now, and he will probably find that it’s not very difficult to transfer from engineering to something else, especially if that something else is in the liberal arts.

This is not failure. This is research.

If your son likes math (as many kids who try engineering do), he might want to investigate the possibility of an economics major. My daughter, who likes math but dislikes science, is very happy so far with economics.