Comments on: Camp Conflicted

By: OC

OC — Fri, 08 Aug 2008 06:12:24 +0000

My experience in college mirrors the pre-med student very well. I came from a very under-resourced high school (no acceleration, no science lab, computers only when the school could afford to buy one or someone donated one) and felt defeated my freshman year of college. I decided to take it a step further than that student and try to drop out of college. My German professor convinced me to stay, but I dropped my ideas of a dream career catering to the abilities that I had thought I possessed. Fortunately, while I was volunteering at an alternative high school, one of the students and several teachers encouraged me to reconsider my decision after I lectured on health topics. After returning, I have worked hard to catch up with those students who had done everything right, and many of my professors have commented on my abilities, reassuring me that I could succeed even without the opportunities that most students had experienced. Although it has been an arduous task to overcome my educational disadvantage, it is possible for one to pursue such a course without the “right” resume. As a tutor working with inner city students, I have tried to stress this fact, as many horror stories of limitted options do exist.
It is good that your daughter is following her interests and passions, rather than trying to create the perfect resume. In the long run, I feel that I have gained more insight into myself as a person and have cultivated more interests through my path than if I had taken the “right” path to my career.

By: SwitchedOnMom

SwitchedOnMom — Mon, 04 Aug 2008 22:28:46 +0000

“I really wish someone had pointed out …how many entire swaths of the job market I was excluding myself from by not really learning math all that well.”

That was me! I was on the advanced math track through middle school, the top girl in my class. Decided I didn’t like math/science in high school and decided to stagger the two my last two years, such that my last math class was in jr. year (never took calculus) and I skipped chemistry and took physics my senior year. No one ever said, what the h*** are you doing?! I satisfied my undergrad math requirement with a computer course, and stats for the social sciences (I got an A, but I retained absolutely NOTHING from that course–went in knowing how to do an average, that’s still all I know.) For grad school I chose the program that didn’t have a quantitative econ requirement, and even then I barely got though because I had never learned differential equations.

Needless to say, both of my girls have heard this story, and–exactly as you say–how this severely limited my career options. No one ever told me this. No one ever said you CAN do this.

By: Crimson Wife

Crimson Wife — Mon, 04 Aug 2008 21:48:34 +0000

I was a pre-med at an Ivy caliber university for my freshman and sophomore years and got fine grades even though I never did any prestigious math or science competitions. I quit the pre-med track halfway through college not because I couldn’t compete but because I finally came to the realization that going to med school was my parents’ dream and not mine. I wanted a larger family, and felt a clash between my biological clock and the requirement of 4 years in graduate school plus another 3-5+ years in residency to become a M.D. This was during the time frame that those infamous “baby bottle hourglass” ads were running with the reminder that a woman’s fertility starts to decline at around age 27.

By: adsoofmelk

adsoofmelk — Sun, 03 Aug 2008 02:09:43 +0000

The “No idea what to do when I graduated” idea also definitely applies to me — and my parents basically said that whatever I wanted to major in was fine with them.

I appreciate the freedom, but on the other hand, I really wish someone had pointed out some of the realities of being an English teacher — and pointed out how many entire swaths of the job market I was excluding myself from by not really learning math all that well.

And yeah, I’m trying to avoid that with our child. We’ll see…