Second Semester Anxiety

blossom
Sun, 06 Mar 2016 14:08:20 +0000

OP- your D’s education won’t be hampered in any way if she has only one major vs. two. Your D’s education won’t be hampered in any way if she decides not to study abroad but finds a summer program, fellowship after completing her undergrad, gets a job overseas, or some other alternative- it’s not like if you don’t go abroad junior year you can never have a quality international experience. And best of all- your D’s education won’t be hampered in any way if she gets a B.

Your D WILL find that an inability to ask for help when she’s overwhelmed (whether counseling to deal with anxiety, or scheduling with a Dean when her schedule is untenable, or help from the tutoring center when it seems to take her longer than her classmates to write a paper or study for an exam, or help from the TA when she keeps getting the same answer wrong on a quiz) IS going to hamper her education, long term, and possibly in some consequential ways.

She is a hard worker and no doubt will feel stretched at some points along the way. That’s a good thing. But if she’s always the one of her friends who can’t see a movie, go hear the college’s jazz jam, watch her roommate row crow- and not just the night before a big test but for an entire semester- she needs to raise the white flag and get some help.

The double majoring craze has got to go (in my opinion). Unless a kid is in a situation where come senior year he or she realizes that with one class first semester and another class second semester, he/she can easily slide into a second major-- there doesn’t seem to be a lot of upside and plenty of downside- especially if it’s the source of a lot of scheduling angst. Kids think that econ and statistics are going to make them oh-so-much-more employable. Which is absolutely true. But it doesn’t NEED to be a double major for it to count- it can just be “BA in Econ” with Matlab and SAS and a few other “keywords” on the resume which indicate solid skills in statistics. The current mania for neuroscience at the undergrad level- which in many colleges means a double major in bio and psych or chem and bio- crazy. Nobody is getting hired as “neuroscientist” after getting a BS anyway. So major in the core discipline- take enough classes in allied fields so that you know what you are getting into if you decide to pursue a doctorate in neuroscience, and call it a day.

Big hugs. There is nothing worse than the tearful phone calls. Except maybe no phone calls when you are imagining her misery.

See if you can get her to make an appointment with her advisor, dean, or counseling center. Baby steps.