She may find she needs calculus to complete a degree in psychology.
@multiplemom I’ve been thinking about this thread for days.
I don’t think you hate your kid’s college choice. I think you are worried about her projects for success in college…and it wouldn’t matter where she went to college.
You have gotten some good suggestions upstream.
Thank you all for your thoughtful responses. It felt good to just have my feelings validated somewhat. I took her to dinner and asked hard questions. She responded openly and positively (haven’t seen a lot of that lately). She told me she didn’t just choose Engineering School for the engineering. She liked the atmosphere and its emphasis on innovation. She disliked Flagship College’s emphasize on tradition. She told me she doesn’t want a tshirt or logo item because she hates that kind of stuff (She’s pretty anti-sports.) I told her she could take a gap year or attempt to switch schools and she had no interest. She reassured me she is looking forward to school.
As to the major switch to psychology, she stated her reasons and they seem grounded. Her Dad and I always thought engineering wasn't really her. She told me she did not really like lab work and did not want a science major. She listed the many subjects she is interested in. Psychology will allow her to take some courses in many of these in ways that engineering wouldn't. She did her senior project on mental health in teens and enjoyed it. I am much more confident that she will be able to handle the psychology coursework than I was with engineering. We have always expected her to go to graduate school and that will improve her job prospects in psychology.
Basically to change she is registering for classes required for psychology and will apply for a change of college at the end of the fall semester. It should be granted as long as she has a 2.0.
She rejected my suggestion that she try a semester in engineering. She also told me that she had met with an adviser privately who suggested the same thing try engineering for a semester. I did not know she had had any personal advising session.
She sees me as too controlling. (sigh) She doesn't like it when I attempt to oversee deadlines, etc. She is adamant that she wants to do it on her own. I am learning to accept this. She does have some plans to manage her ADD in the fall. She isn't taking her medication in the summer, because she is lifeguarding and it makes her sleepy but she plans to take it during school. She does plan to follow through and use disability services and perhaps ask for counseling help in the fall. We haven't yet gotten the results of her testing this summer. She is hopeful that the nature of college work will actually make things easier in some ways than high school. She has tended to do better in classes with a few tests or papers rather than classes with lots of busywork. She also thinks she will do better because she told me she is genuinely interested in every class she is registered for.
As for the living situation, I agree it's not ideal but one of her strengths is her ability to get along with a wide variety of people and make friends. She has an interest in feminism and I think is fascinated by women as minorities in professions and will use living in the women in science and engineering dorm as sort of a case study thing. Hopefully she will meet friends with other majors in her scholars program. The big downside I see, is that she will have to have a new roommate her sophomore year since it's likely her freshman roommate will continue to live in the engineering village.
So it's not an ideal situation, but I feel I need to accept her choice now and just be there for her when she asks for help.
Thank you Thumper1 for what you said about not really hating her college choice. I am genuinely worried for her even though I get a lot of joking comments since Flagship school was my alma mater.
Oh this sounds really good. I didn’t know it would be possible to take psychology classes and switch schools so easily. She sounds positive. Hopefully she will set up supports and enjoy the beginning of school after a bout of anxiety about it. Good luck!
Great progress and news!
@multiplemom - FWIW, I have an undergrad degree in psychology (and a PhD in it) and I work for a technology company with hundreds (thousands?) of engineers, scientists, mathematicians, etc. I also was a National Science Foundation fellow in graduate school and give panels/talks at science events for how women and minorities can transition into careers in science. The NSF actually considers psychology a science; but more importantly, there are a lot of ways in which psychology can overlap with the sciences and engineering. There’s a whole field called engineering psychology; there’s quantitative psychology; there’s human-computer interaction and user experience (which is the field I work in); there’s industrial-organizational psychology.
As a psychology major at an engineering institution, she’ll have the opportunity to enrich her coursework with other skills that will make her a desirable candidate - programming perhaps? Data science? Machine learning?
Living in a women in engineering living/learning center also doesn’t seem weird. A goodly chunk of my friends in college were engineering majors. Turns out now I work around engineers (of all genders, mostly men) all day long as a psychologist; I’m glad I had the experience communing with engineers a lot because I do it alllll day long now. Let her learn the language!
Also, most people have different roommates in their sophomore year. That’s not necessarily a downside. There’s also no guarantee she won’t want to live in the women in science and engineering dorm next year.
I gotta say I am an engineer who doesn’t like lab work…and I work as an engineer that doesn’t do lab work. Just saying.